


From the Ashes

by Mythic418



Category: Halo, Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 00:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 47,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4981837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythic418/pseuds/Mythic418
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Project Freelancer wasn't the only black ops research program to implode. It wasn't even the first. And it wasn't just ONI  conducting them.</p><p>In the midst of the Human-Covenant war, in the year 2552, one of Project Freelancer's agents reveals herself a traitor. In order to stop her secrets from falling into insurrectionist hands- insurrectionists that are suspiciously well financed- the Project enlists a soldier from a different research team. One made available by the near-total annihilation of that team.</p><p>Agent Arizona- manipulated, vengeful, slowly losing his sanity- just wants to earn redemption. Shadows of his past, from long-dead enemies to his still-dead girlfriend, might make that messier than it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.1: All Under Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the fall of RvbFics.com, and the complete loss of the original story, I think now is as great a time as any to start posting the rewritten version I've been doing. Old readers will find the new story to be more coherent plot-wise, chapters flowing better, and all around tidied up. New readers will find an OC fanfiction based in Red vs Blue's Project Freelancer saga, specifically after CT defects, but with a lot of divergence- essentially, it's a story that just happens to use RvB as a base, and I'm trying not to make it necessary for readers to know RvB to read this fic.
> 
> Hopefully, I'll update with a new chapter every week. At least until chapter 38.
> 
> Enjoy, and don't be afraid to leave brutally honest (but at least a little bit constructive) comments!

**1.1: All Under Control**

****

A lone D77-TC Pelican- the UNSC's primary orbit-capable dropship- flew through the planet Reach’s upper atmosphere toward a giant metal structure hovering above the gargantuan planet, carrying only two occupants in a ship that could carry 12 comfortably. The two sat in the cockpit of the ship; one was dressed in the standard UNSC Air Force pilot armour, while the other was dressed in simple black fatigues. The pilot muttered something into his full-head helmet, and fiddled with the controls. The other simply sat, admiring the view.

They passed under the gigantic arm of the Anchor 7 refitting station, under several enormous UNSC vessels being repaired and refuelled for the never-ending Human-Covenant War, and then past the main control bay. The station stood still in the vast emptiness of Reach’s low orbit, a giant among the tiny ships, covered in hundreds of blinking lights. They gave a wide berth to the debris field of a partially-scrapped cruiser, and then went towards one of the many repair bays, shaped like a giant cage; dozens of long metal strips, folded into octagon perimeters, formed a tube several hundred metres across that completely contained a UNSC stealth frigate. It gleamed with the light of a hundred welding torches, as engineers, both human and robotic, hurried to repair the vast amount of damage it had taken. Apart from bearing many areas of shattered hull from missile impacts, the entire ship was blackened and partially melted, as if it had flown too close to a star. It seemed like the whole exterior was being replaced; from the damage it had sustained, that was probably a good idea. In this time, though, while humanity was locked in an interstellar war with an alien galactic empire, it was surprising that the ship was getting any attention at all.

The pelican, minuscule against everything else around it, flew around to the port side of the ship, and as it did the two inside saw the ship’s giant name come into view. In letters fifty feet high, with white paint scarred and charred by countless attacks, read  _ Mother of Invention _ . And then, the pelican descended into a tiny hangar on the lower port side of the frigate, ending the two men’s entrancement.

****

Inside the hangar of the ship, the man in black fatigues wondered what he had done to deserve this.

It had to be some sort of punishment duty. Most likely, he had offended 0-8-9, she had bitched about it to the counselling officer, and then  _ they _ had gotten him re-assigned onto some backwater ship patrolling the outer colonies. Why the fuck did  _ he _ get rebel duty? He shook his head, came back to reality, and at the pilot’s request disembarked from the pelican. He walked out of the troop bay, feeling blood flow back into his legs.

A cursory glance around the giant hangar revealed nothing too interesting, so he walked towards the blast doors, and into a long metal hallway, spanning a good portion of the ship’s length. On the right, plexiglass triple-layered windows showed the repair efforts taking place on the ship; while on the left, doors led to rooms, and junctions led to more hallways crossing the width of the ship; while to his immediate behind, a figure, leaning on the side of the doorway, coughed.

He turned, and was met with a mix of giddy excitement and fear.

In front of him stood a behemoth. A seven feet tall hulking mass of seafoam-green, aqua-marine, whatever-the-fuck-colour-that-was armour, with thick black mesh underneath- stood with arms crossed, and helmet slightly lowered, menacingly. It shrugged itself off of the wall, towered over the now terrified man, and reached forward its monstrous arm-

-Into a handshake. “Hey. Agent Carolina. You’re the newbie, right?” She had a friendly, if bored voice, made slightly electronic by her helmet.

After a moment of apprehension, he nodded, and then shook her hand. She squeezed gently, but to him it was like his hand was in a vice, and he quickly shook and pulled it away. He looked up at Agent Carolina, and realised that he was being addressed by a  _Spartan_.

He said, in awe, “Is that MJOLNIR?”

“What?”

“MJOLNIR.”

“Repeating the word won’t help.” she said, irritated.

“Spartan armour. The stuff you’re wearing.”

She looked down at her hands, with sudden realisation. “Oh, forgot I was wearing it. And no, it’s a scaled down version. Still pretty powerful though” With that, she reached up to her neck, reached under the helmet, and pulled it off her head.

The first thing he noticed was red. Long red hair cascaded from her head, drooping over one side so that her left eye was nearly covered, while the rest was tied into a messy ponytail at the back, coming down to her lower neck; all of this, bright scarlet red, with streaks of orange. The second two things were her green eyes- they focused in on his, and then narrowed with her eyelids. Her straight, dark red eyebrows angled themselves in a scowl, and her extremely pale, almost white brow wrinkled with it. Her shapely nose and soft, light pink lips formed a grimace, and folded her shallow cheeks into themselves. Her jaw, which formed an inverted triangle, raised slightly, allowing her to look down on the newbie even more than she already was, with at least a foot more height on him.

She sighed, held the helmet to her waist, and said, “Alright, rookie, we've got a lot to cover. let’s get going.”

She strode past him, making him have to half-walk half-run to keep up.

“Are you going to tell me your name?”

He thought for a second. There was his code, 4-1-8, but then that had some… Unsavoury emotions attached to it. There was his actual name- just the forename, as the surname was long forgotten- but that just felt... Special. Only two people had used it with him, and somehow it felt disrespectful to just give it away to anyone. So- he’d just make a new one; he hadn't even finished his paperwork yet- he could easily change it.

_ What to? _

“Hey. Take your fucking time.”

Well, she was Carolina, and from the limited reading he’d done on Freelancer, the standard naming convention was US states, so…

Carolina scowled at him, annoyed. On a whim, he said, “Arizona.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least you’re trying to fit in. So,  _ Agent Arizona _ , welcome aboard the UNSC  _ Mother of Invention _ . The ship that, in the midst of the Human-Covenant war, seems to only care about fighting humans.”

He stopped, confused. “What?”

She grinned, without smiling. “We fight the insurrection. You’d think that after aliens showed up we’d all band together, but no. So, we deal with their command structure while other ships worry about the Covenant armada.” Then she smiled. “Get it?”

He gave her a blank look.

“We fight the Innies out of…”

“Need?”

“Necessity, idiot.”

He was still giving her a blank look.

“And necessity is the…” She raised her eyebrows, expectantly, and rose her hands towards him, mockingly.

He sighed. “Right. Good joke.”

“Yeah, well I didn't name the ship. Alright, this is the Freelancer quarters.”

She gestured down a corridor, leading to the middle of the ship, which then opened out into a large rectangle. Small doors littered the perimeter, and from the single one that was wide open, it was probable that they all led to a single room, just small enough to be cosy, complete with bed, dresser, and desk, all made of dark grey steel, and a small cot, which even at a distance, the newly named Agent Arizona could tell was exactly like every other military cot in existence.

Carolina pointed to it, grinned and said, “Yours. Have fun.” Then she spun on her heel, facing back toward the edge of the ship, and started walking. Not really knowing what to do, Arizona followed.

She looked back, saw him following, and sighed in disappointment. “Are you going to follow me around all day?”

“Well what should I be doing?”

She scowled again. “Probably following me, since I'm supposed to give you the tour.”

To that, he had no answer except to keep following awkwardly.

****

Eventually, they stopped again, and Carolina waved him into an arena, of sorts. The corridor curved around, making a complete circle made almost entirely of plexiglass, with many large empty rooms around the circumference: each one had a different type of training equipment in it. One was filed with weightlifting equipment, treadmills, a deadly-looking combination of levers and pulleys and other assorted exercise equipment sets; one had a shooting range, complete with a wall filled to the brim with every type of ranged weapon imaginable- there was even a longbow; another one, suited for sparring, had a raised platform in the centre, and hundreds of melee weapons lining shelves around it.

In the centre, however, one giant room dominated the rest of them, coming out to a hundred metres diameter, and over forty metres high. And completely empty. Arizona stood for a moment in awe, confused awe, before Carolina said, bored, “This is the training deck. Seven small rooms, suited for various training. The fucking enormous one is our sim room.”

“Sim?” he knew what it meant, he just wanted to be sure it was what he thought it was.

“Yeah, holographic projections create semi-solid objects, like walls, for advanced training scenarios. We have a bi-monthly full-team event in it- actually, the next one’s two days.” She looked him over. “You’ll probably want to skip that one though.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

She hesitated for a second, either because of apprehension or just to build tension, and then said, “You’ll get demolished. If you were against me, you wouldn't last ten seconds. If you were against our best, you wouldn't last one.” Then she shrugged, not really apologetically.

He frowned. “Well, you do get to use the super murder armour.”

“So do you.”

Carolina smiled as a huge grin appeared on Arizona’s face. She sighed, amusedly, and then pointed to the door opposite the coliseum's entrance. Arizona practically skipped towards it.

They entered a locker room, of sorts. The first section, right by the door, did indeed have lockers; one for each of the Freelancers. Behind that, though, lay the real purpose of the room: ten three-metre high discs against the walls, that had hollow centres filled with armour. Right now there were four discs that were occupied: one had a standard set of brown Mark VI; one a white set with a striking EVA helmet, covered in orange visor; one a steel and gold set of Mark VI; and the last, in a disc at the far end of the room, deep in the corner, was all black.

He walked to it. It wasn't Mark VI, nor was it any of the other Mark VI variants; this one was unique. The shoulder pauldrons were sleek and rounded, mimicking the form of an actual upper arm. The chestplate was also sleek and rounded- it formed a H shape on the chest, with the lower legs of armour looping around to the back of the torso, while the top legs stretched over the shoulders; in the middle of the H, a locked-in-place piece of heavy duty armour protected the centre of mass more than enough. The helmet of the set, though, was what really distinguished it.

The jaw of the armour formed a round curve from ear to ear, with two large vents either side, while the brow of the helm sloped forward in a short cap; not entirely different from Mark VI’s, but lacking the signature outcroppings. The visor was the striking part; it stretched down to the nose, followed the cheekbones all the way to the ear; then it came back in, stopping at the corner of the eye; from there, it rose to the brow, meeting the cap, with a small dip of armour into the visor from the top centre. The visor was concave; from the side, it would look as if it had been dented inward right above the eyes. And the visor’s surface, in contrast to every other MJOLNIR variant, was not smooth. Apart from being concave, it also had depth to it, with a raised portion on the nose area, lowered cheeks, and the lowest part of all being the eyes: they receded in small ovals, giving a faint effect of the helmet wearing a pair of goggles. All of this contributed to the most exotic set of armour Arizona had ever seen.

He fucking hoped so; he hadn't designed it to be mundane.

But actually seeing it, in real life? He almost came, right there.

Carolina came to stand beside him. “Shit. Is that Tex’s? Because that’s fucking unfair if she gets a new set of power armour.”

“Tex? She?”

“Texas. Girl. Bitch.”

“Well, don’t worry, it’s not her’s.”

She turned to look at him, in mock amazement. “Wow, really rookie? Because you've been here five minutes, so how the fuck should you know?”

Not taking his eyes off of the beautiful sight before him, he said, “Well, first, from the size of the codpiece, it’s male. Second, I made this.”

She didn't even bother answering, just stared him down until he elaborated.

“Well, not made. I designed it. My old facility had this computer program where you could modify armour- we didn’t actually have any, it was all just simulation. Had to make do with fucking SPI armour. Anyway, we could change the helmet, the shoulders, all that shit, but then I looked at the code- there was this stupid levelling to unlock mechanism that I wanted to get around- and, I guess it wasn't really me who actually-”

He noticed Carolina’s disinterested stare. “Basically, it had a full create-your-own-armour system inside it. I had a friend complete it, then spent… Maybe three years steadily improving armour variants. I honestly have no fucking idea why it’s here, though.”

Carolina looked at the armour; it really was a spectacle of design- she had yet to see it perform, but it did look incredibly well made. Then she looked back at Arizona, who was beaming. “So you, what, made this from scratch?”

He shook his head, still entranced by the magnificence. “No, I just heavily modified an existing variant. I think....” he looked at Carolina, and then down at the helmet she was carrying at her hip. “Rogue.”

He grinned, cockily, now actually looking at her instead of his armour. Carolina looked back, and instead of seeing him as CT’s shitty replacement, started to see a rookie- incredibly skilled, but still definitely a rookie- Freelancer.

Agent Arizona- a name that didn't exist an hour ago- had brown, nearly black hair, cut short, thick and messy. He had a thin jaw, and an ovular face, with a flat nose. His eyes- grey with a hint of blue- still beamed at Carolina, and his teeth showed through his smile. The three cracked teeth were quite visible through it; the upper left canine, and the premolar and incisor either side of it, were quite obviously missing large portions of tooth. Actually, now she was looking for them, Carolina was seeing more scars. A faded length of scar tissue ran from the upper right cheek down to the jawline; a nearly vanished bruise lingered on his forehead; and, on close inspection, his skin- all of it, from neck to forehead, and even on his hands- carried the roughness and faint paleness of long since faded burning.

Now a little embarrassed, Carolina turned back to the armour, but was still only thinking of him. If he could design this…

“Listen, Arizona. Project Freelancer is, I'm not going to lie, full of assholes. Trust me, there are some people you don’t want to get involved with.” Then, to seal the deal, she put her arm on his shoulder, looked him the eye, and said, “Just stick with me, rookie, and you’ll be fine.”

He looked back at her, analysing. Such a sudden change of friendliness; some part of him told him that he was being used; another part shot that idea down, pointing out that to use a person is why humans make friends. He resolved to go with it, see what it was she wanted, and decide what it was he wanted from her. Also, making friends was probably a good thing in its own right, too.

He wondered how 0-8-9 was doing, now that he was gone, and what she’d think of making friends. Then again, she had got her only one left sent to the other side of the fucking planet, off to some Innie hideout on the corner of the Milky Way, so that said a little bit about her thoughts on the matter. Maybe Agent Carolina would end up doing the same thing; maybe 4-1-8- no, Arizona now- would betray the friendship first.

He smiled, the same practiced beaming cockiness from before, and Carolina reciprocated it.

  
  



	2. 1.2: Proper Technique

“You can’t be serious.”

Arizona looked at her, head cocked, stubborn. “Why not? Your job right now is to show me the ropes, right?”

She looked away from him, and quickly said, “Well, I wouldn't say that, just more show you around, for a few minutes maybe.”

He waited until she looked back at him. “What were your orders.  _ Exactly _ . Direct quote whoever gave them.”

She sighed. “He actually did use the words ‘show him the ropes’.”

Arizona chuckled. “So, if you are to do so, Agent Carolina, then seeing as powered armour is a very important part of a Freelancer’s training, you  _ should  _ show me how to work it.”

She scowled, but nodded in defeat. “Fine. but you’ll need techs to put it on; even we take about five minutes.” Then she added, “Also, stop it with Carolina. Just call me ‘Lina.”

Not listening to her, and already slipping into the under-armour bodysuit of the MJOLNIR armour, he grinned in the same arrogant manner. “Time me.”

****

In four minutes and forty-seven seconds, Arizona conceded. “This isn't fucking right. This piece doesn't belong here! And where the fuck are the buckles for the-” his eyes widened in understanding, then fury. “They fucking changed it!”

Carolina raised an eyebrow, mocking interest. “ _ Oh no _ . What’s wrong.”

He turned to her. “Whoever the fuck made this armour  _ changed  _ it. For whatever fucking reason. So, I have no idea where to go from here.”

Carolina got up off of the bench, went beside him, and immediately saw the problem. “Yeah you have to sort of slip it in and twist. Here.” And in one graceful movement, the forearm piece that had stumped Arizona locked onto his wrist, securely in  position.

Incredulous, he said, “How the fuck does…”

She grabbed both his arms, maneuvered them to make him put the armour into place, slipped the armour onto his other wrist, and twisted it in.

“Oh.  _ Right _ . Thanks.”

She stepped back, and nodded. Then she walked off, out of the locker room, and Arizona hastened to follow her. In his newly found strength, coming out out of the many servos in the armour, he flew forwards, fell, tried to get up with his hand, punched the ground so hard it dented the metal, and then very slowly got up. He picked up his helmet, held it under his arm, and carefully walked after Carolina.

****

“Where are we-  _ oh _ .”

They had entered one of the seven smaller training rooms- though these were still two stories high and the size of a small pelican hangar- which contained equipment suited to unarmed combat. On one side stood a variety of equipment such as punching bags, kicking bags, an arcade dancing machine; usual apparatus for unarmed combat. On the other… Shelves covered the walls, and they were lined with weaponry. It started with boxing tape, then gloves, then knuckledusters, then some hideous stabbing contraptions- after that came the heavy duty MJOLNIR gear. Armoured gloves of every possible variation; attachable spikes and blades; even a sort of cage to go around the fist that was connected to a small power box, with metal suspiciously charred. In the centre stood a sandpit, with a ten-metre wide combat ring.

“You… You know this is the first time I've worn power-armour, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “You're not going to be fighting, idiot. We’re just using the space.”

“Right,” he said, relieved.

“So, first thing about power-armour. It is  _ not  _ armour. It is a  _ weapon _ . You have to treat it like every other weapon; you wouldn't wave around a pistol, so don’t wave around this. Always be aware of your limbs. One stray hand hitting someone can be lethal. Always move consciously, with care. And also, never, ever put your hands near your face.”

Arizona, who had been scratching his ear, quickly moved his hand to his side. It smacked his hip, causing him to wince.

Carolina sighed. “You touch your face, an involuntary action could send your hand into your skull. In fact, for now, until you’re used to it, always have your helmet on.”

He looked down at his helm, wondering if this was a test. “But… My hands would-”

She took the helmet from him. “ _ Idiot _ . Good point, though. At least you’re attentive.  _ Fuck _ , I remember when I showed York.” She laughed to herself, “He saluted me, the sarcastic moron, and smacked himself in the forehead. He’d literally be dead if he didn't have his helmet on.”

She lowered the helm onto Arizona’s head, and for a few seconds, all he saw was black. Then, blue light blinded him; it formed into his heads-up-display, while the rest of the world came back into view. His HUD showed some shitty start-up program, blocking the centre of his vision. “Uh... I can’t see, and I'm pretty sure this needs to be hooked up to a computer to-”

Carolina clicked something under his helmet, on the back of his neck, and the display initialised, showing so much information it hurt his eyes. Carolina clicked again, and then it was as if he wasn't even wearing a helmet. His eyes widened in excitement, and in his giddiness, he quickly turned around to share his giddiness.

He immediately knocked into Carolina, who had much better balance than he did, and so he was sent sprawling to the ground.

“Idiot.”

He grinned inside his helmet.


	3. 1.3: Verbal Violence

She looked him over, hesitant, and asked one more time. “Are you _completely_ fucking sure.”

Arizona flung his arms out; “Yes! We've been here for two fucking hours now, I know how to fucking move in power-armour!” then, off-hand: “Honestly, you treat it like it takes months of practice. They make it so it’s easy to use- extension of your body and all that.”

She sighed, making sure to do so audibly for Arizona’s sake now that they were both helmeted, and then adopted a fighting stance. “Fine then. We start slow. You can stop any time you want.”

“So what’s the safety word?” he chuckled to himself.

“Oh, I don’t know… anything along the lines of, ‘please stop shattering my ribcage’.” She smiled.

He had no answer to that, except to awkwardly raise his hands into a defensive position.

Less than second after, Carolina was on him. She threw a punch at his face, which he just blocked, delivered a left hook to his side, which he dodged, and then spun and kicked, which went right through Arizona’s block, and sent him reeling.

He just managed to regain balance on the edge of the circle of failure. “Shit, you said you were going to start slow.”

“Do you honestly believe that _that_ is what I call fast.”

He shrugged, and slowly approached.

She started circling. “You know, there really is no shame in leaving right now. You just arrived, you just wore power armour for the first time, you haven’t had me crack one of your bones yet.”

He laughed, nervousness showing through. “What’s the matter? Scared?” then, quickly after that he added, “ _Obviously_ you’re not scared. I’m not that fucking dumb.”

“Oh no, you’re absolutely right. I am currently _terrified_ that I’ll accidentally snap your neck, and then I’ll be known as the girl who killed a rookie on his first day.”

“Well, I doubt-” he didn’t have time to finish, because a near-instant jab at his chest came. He blocked it. “-that you could really snap my-” Another jab, this time at his upper arm, which he turned away from, caused them to swap sides, now far away again. “-neck. If this armour was made correctly- which I am actually doubting now- it should stop twisting at about 100 degrees.”

She scoffed. “Do you think- that’s not how you break a neck, stupid. Just any large amount of force would do it. For instance, a high-kick to your face. Or even just a strong enough punch. I should say that I have been known to give people whiplash from sparring.”

He grimaced. “Thanks for telling me that. Really gives me hope.”

“Come on, we’re not-”

Then, he struck. He punched at her quickly, testing the waters, to her chest, side, and head. She reciprocated with a jab at his chest, and a sweeping blow to his midsection; every hit was easily blocked.

Arizona decided to ramp things up a little- this exercise was meant for him to test himself, so why shouldn’t he test his limits? He tried a high-kick at Carolina’s torso, which she caught, and seeing him off-balance, used to thrown him to the ground. She let him get back to his feet.

They went at each other again, gaining speed, slowly getting faster with every strike. Carolina began to use her feet more and more- he could already tell she preferred them over her fists- while Arizona began hitting harder, and using more variance in his attacks. He started using his elbows after some punches, used knees to strike at Carolina’s waist, and even tried spinning a few times, but wasn’t able to keep balance very well. He ended up on the floor three more times, until Carolina stepped back.

“Alright; you really want to learn how to fight in this? Watch the skill.”

Then she was on him, fast, meaning he had to react nearly instantly to defend. Arizona was amazed at how fast he _could_ react, though; the armour made it seem like his arm had blocked the blow before he had even told it to. Invigorated with confidence, he stepped up to match Carolina.

They exchanged weak blows, still testing, until Carolina aimed a kick at his chest that couldn’t be blocked. She span around faster than he thought was possible, and would have sent him to the other side of the room if it wasn’t for his well-timed dodge. She still managed a glancing blow, however, and knocked him off-balance. He recovered before Carolina could exploit it.

Arizona went in with punches, left hook, right jab, right swing, before he went into a crouching position, under Carolina’s defence, and tried to bring his shoulder up into her. She saw it, and fell flat, allowing him to leap over her. He didn’t give him time to recover; she was on him as soon as he hit the ground, one hand on his throat, the other raised above his head, ready to strike.

She waited for a moment, and then jumped off him.

She started talking again, and circling. “So, you decide to come to a black ops program, give yourself a new name, and _what_? Why are you here?”

He stayed silent.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, you are good. You showed more promise in a few seconds than I’ve ever got from Wash. But you just don’t have the… Energy.”

Arizona tilted his head. “So, is that like, thermal energy, or light, or are we talking spiritual-”

“I mean _mindset_ , idiot. You’re still fighting like you’re not wearing power-armour. So, some pointers: speed is all you worry about. The suit can handle the power. And also, don’t be afraid to do something… Inventive. We’re fighting to learn, so try some new stuff.”

He nodded in appreciation, and then rushed at her. He feigned a left handed punch, which was probably obvious to her, but instead of going right handed instead, _instead_ he slid. He went down beside her legs, grabbed one, and managed to pull it slightly. She _nearly_ went down, but kept her balance, and planted a foot on his chest. She backed off again.

“I mean… Good effort, but try stuff that might work.”

“ _Right_.” he said through gritted teeth, as he pulled himself up.

He waited for her, and after a few seconds, she came with her feet, left to his chest, right to his legs, and then spun; when she did, he was ready and twisted around her, following her turn until she came to kick the thin air where he was, while he was behind her.

Something caught his eye, and in the millisecond he was distraction Carolina jumped, flying up into a tight backflip, stuck out her leg, and brought the power of it down onto his torso. She landed in a crouch, and quickly spun around to see him lying on the floor. He groaned.

“You did have me for a second there. But to win a battle, you can’t hesitate. You’ll get your ass kicked.”

“Yeah, I understand that part.”

“Don’t act like it’ll come naturally. It’s taken years for me to get this far.”

“Yeah, I guess I don’t have the ‘energy’.” he said, caustic.

She narrowed her eyes. “Cockiness is _not_ a good trait in rookies. Earn the arrogance. Leave the snarky remarks to us.”

He sighed, thought for a moment, and decided to go all-out: “You talk like I’ve come from some farm on an outer colony, and this is the first time I’ve ever been in a fight. Do you think training with power armour is much different than without? Combat isn’t just knowing moves; it’s reaction speed, it’s knowing _which_ moves to use, it’s trying to anticipate _how_ your opponent’s going to react.”

He gestured at her- “You prefer your legs in combat, you use your momentum to your advantage frequently, you like to use spinning attacks, you value speed and agility. Once I know how an opponent attacks, I know their weakness.”

Carolina subtly tensed, making him smile. He finished, “Leaving _them_ vulnerable to attack.”

Even though it was exactly what she expected, Arizona chose that moment to strike; it was just too good a dramatic opportunity. She valued speed over power; he kept his reflexes up, while striking in ways where she couldn’t dodge, and had to block. She valued her feet over her fists; he kept his own legs nearly on top of hers, making sure they couldn’t go anywhere. And finally, she liked the… Exotic moves, which meant that she would definitely try one soon. He looked out for it, and prepared himself to dodge it as soon as as he saw it coming. Whatever it was, he couldn’t block what he didn’t know.

Arizona, sure in this knowledge, managed to keep up with her for a short time, until she decided to use one of her special attacks. She leapt at him, right foot preparing for a strong kick to his abdomen, but then only used it to stabilise herself on his blocking palms. Her left leg struck out, swinging up to his head, ready to slam into his chin.

Instead, Arizona leant backward, allowing the foot to sail past him and into the air. Carolina used the other leg to push backward, and backflipped back into a standing position.

Seeing his lean, Carolina wasted no time in rushing him. Before she could hit, Arizona pushed further back, rolling backward into a standing position, and causing her to overshoot towards him. He sidestepped, grabbed her wrist, and swung her around him, making her disoriented, and giving him momentum.

He transferred the momentum into a tight spinning motion, faster than he could have ever thought possible, and jumped, throwing out his leg. His kick reached perfect head-height for Carolina, who had just turned in time to see his boot hit her square in the face with incredible force.

First her head snapped back disturbingly quickly; then, the force affected her body, which flew backwards with the motion of her head causing her to slightly rotate backwards in the air. Carolina flew nearly three metres, before her back hit the sand, and the rest of her body rolled backwards over itself, before crumpling to a stop.

Arizona was buzzing. He had actually made good contact! And from the way Carolina was groaning, it was apparently very effective.

Also, from the way that she was rolling over in pain.

And also in the anger that was clearly visible as she punched the ground, lifted herself up a foot, and slowly turned her head to look at him.

It was then that Arizona realised why Carolina had chosen the Mark VI Rogue variant for her helmet. It wasn’t because of functionality, or even because of aesthetics; it was because when she tilted her head downward, just a little bit, it was the most terrifying sight that Arizona had ever seen.

Her _visor_ glowered at him.

He stood still, mind blank. What should he do? Obviously, causing pain was the goal of this exercise… But equally obvious was how massively he had fucked up. Then, as she slowly began to pull herself up into a standing position, he did the right thing- he walked up to her, and offered a hand to help her up.

She stopped. And glowered.

He kept holding out his hand, only now starting to realise what true terror was.

She began to stand again, by herself, until she was at full height. Even when they were both armoured, she still had at least 5 inches on him. She still towered over him.

He dropped his hand, practically shitting himself, and backed off from her, as she continued just staring. Not even moving. Just keeping her head angled downward in that slight way that made her helmet look like death incarnate.

It continued for another six seconds; each punctuated by Arizona’s heart beating his eardrums.

Then, she dropped it. Instantly, her head raised, her stance relaxed, and she apparently forgot her ferocity. Arizona allowed himself a sigh of relief, but didn’t let his guard down.

Carolina, in her normal voice, said, “Okay. Maybe I did underestimate you. The fact you just hit me means you’re already in the top half of the Freelancers. So, you know, _congratulations_.”

Arizona tensed, not sure what the fuck was happening.

“You’re perceptive, too- I mean, anyone could describe my fighting style after a few beatings, but you seem to… _Adapt_ to it. I guess the whole weakness thing wasn’t complete shit. But I hope you realise _I_ can do it too. Power over speed, thoughtful attacks, deceptive combat. I know _your_ technique,” and suddenly, Carolina’s voice grew dark. It became almost a growl. “And I can exploit it just as well as you can.”

As her voice hit the peak of horror, her body moved into a violent stance, and her helmet lowered ever-so-slightly, she laughed demonically.

Then, she charged.

She didn’t bother with any testing-the-waters crap this time; she went straight for the jugular, literally. She sent a flat hand to his throat, which he barely backed away from, before a powerful kick hit his knee and brought him down. He fell to a crouch, before a boot hit his head and sent him backwards, leaving him flat on his back.

“You think you can keep up with this?”

After that, she picked him up, threw him back, and gave him a second to steady himself, before coming in again. This time, she solely used her legs, starting with three consecutive head-height kicks that he was just able to dodge. She span again, leg outstretched.

Arizona ducked under a boot that would have taken his head off.

Then she jumped, front-flipped, and used the momentum to put her foot into the top of his head, making him instantly impact the ground. A thin cloud of sand dust actually came up from the shockwave of the impact.

She wasn’t done; she came up to him, and kicked him on the ground, hard. “Not. A _Fucking._ Chance.” Every word was punctuated with pain.

Arizona whimpered.

Then she turned away, slightly ashamed of herself. She was about to apologise, maybe, but when she turned back, he was already up, hands raised in a fighting stance.

She laughed. “Just give the fuck up, rookie. You’re done.”

He didn’t respond.

She shrugged, and went back in for more. He was asking for it.

This time, she decided to use punches; the first four were ineffectual, quickly blocked, but they were just the start. After that, she threw two swings, which he ducked under, then a quick jab, which he blocked with his arm, and then she reared back and threw a solid punch with the force of a half ton of MJOLNIR.

He stopped it, which surprised himself more than than it surprised her.

Suddenly, he was on the attack. He threw three punches, all weak, that she easily blocked, and on the last she grabbed his arm and swung him around, going back on the offensive. She put her legs back in action, and unleashed a flurry of punches, kicks, and elbows, which somehow Arizona managed to survive.

She decided to end it. She crouched low, spinning, and attempted to sweep out his legs, but he moved: he was over her, jumping, and landed ready to attack.

He threw a weak punch, which she blocked, but then his knee came up and hit her in the midsection- a glancing blow, but a blow nonetheless.

She twisted out of his field of attack, and came back with a jumping kick, which he managed to let go past his head and used to grab her, throw her over his shoulder, almost slamming her onto the ground.

Before she hit, she slid out of his grip, twisted around him, trapped him in various legs and arms, and pulled _him_ to the ground.

Their fight ended with Carolina on top of Arizona, breathing quickly, one hand on his raised head, ready to slam it into the ground. She was able to restrain herself, and instead just used her free hand to punch him right in his centre of mass.

“Close. And yet so far.”

He spluttered for air as she got off of him. She stood up to full height, looked down on him, and grimaced.

She let out a hand for him, and he hesitated before taking it.

Despite the incredible pain that he was in, Arizona allowed himself a quick, small smile.


	4. 1.4: Involuntary

Everything was hurting; Arizona was certain that it was literally only his left elbow that wasn’t in pain. Even his genitals, which Carolina had been gracious enough to not obliterate, were injured when he realised it actually was possible to sit on a testicle while wearing MJOLNIR. He’d patch that the updated version.

He started to strip himself of the armour. Starting with the helmet, and then working his way downward from there, he was starting to clearly see the extent of the damage. Everything was bruised- except for that miraculously unharmed left elbow- and several spots on his skin were turning into a sickly yellow colour.

He took it, not complaining. Pain was good. At least, pain could be used in good ways; for instance, he now knew that MJOLNIR definitely didn’t protect the user from blows: it only lessened them. Still, he had to admit that he felt fucking terrible.

Finished changing, he looked up, and realised that Carolina was gone; he was alone.

Something tugged at his lips; a smile, maybe. No, a grimace.

He noticed he was sweating slightly; normal after such a strenuous fight, except he wasn’t sweating just a moment a before.

Alone, in the locker room of the training deck of the UNSC _Mother of Invention_ , in repair bay three of _Anchor 7_ , in high orbit above the planet Reach, designation 4-1-8, now Agent Arizona, noticed that he was alone.

He started thinking.

_First time properly alone since Hadúr’s fall. _

He looked up at nothing in particular, just in time to see something scurry away in his peripheral.

Arizona bolted upright, staring at it; seeing nothing. All it left was a feeling of… Loneliness.

_No, that’s not right. It’s more than that. Like I’m missing something._

Slowly, he sat back down, as Carolina came back in, waving for him to follow.

****

“Listen, I know that I probably went too hard on you for your first time, and that you probably got wrecked from it, so I just want to say… Sorry.”

Arizona raised an eyebrow in mock disbelief.

She rolled her eyes, smiling, and kept on walking, waving her hand for him to follow. They were headed to the mess hall; Carolina had promised to show him one last part of the ship before she left him to his own devices.

She looked back at him, and took a moment, before saying, “Seriously though, that was literally your first fight with power armour. I mean, it’s not hard to get used to it quick, but still…”

“-Honestly, don’t be sorry. Going easy on me would give me the wrong idea about the Freelancers, wouldn’t it?” Then, with surprisingly little effort, he smiled. There was still a twinge of sadness on his mind, but for the most part, it had evaporated with Carolina’s arrival. For that, at least, he was thankful.

Carolina sighed, seeing no sense in arguing, and instead picked up the pace. They quickly reached the mess hall.

“So you know what a mess hall is. Just a few tips, though; sit with the light brown, grey, or dark blue ones. The others are kind of dicks. Also, _don’t fucking talk_ to the black armoured one.”

He glanced at her inquisitively, but she just looked back with her ‘don’t fucking ask me about it’ look, and he kept quiet.

She sighed, took one last look at Arizona, and then turned and started walking.

“Wait! What the fuck do I do now?”

She shrugged, and shouted backward, “Whatever. Train, socialise, sleep, furiously masturbate, I don’t care.”

He dropped his shoulders, and exhaled. His sigh quickly turned into a groan of frustration, and he turned to walk to his dorm.

****

He stood in the doorway for a minute, just standing, not thinking. Finally, he decided to sit on his bed, and found it exactly like every other military cot in existence. He shut the door, and laid back onto the hard pillowcase.

That was a mistake. He started thinking again.

_So I’ve arrived on a new ship for a black-ops program, met a mock-Spartan, got fucking power armour- that_ I _designed- and I’ve already met a non-crazy person. Who might be using me._

He laughed to himself, surprised to hear another voice laugh with him-

Shooting a glance sideways, again seeing nothing, and frowning to himself, Arizona slowly stood up and looked around his room.

He checked for any audio devices, under the bed, on the ceiling, at the-

He saw another shadow, and this time struck out at it.

Hitting into the metal dresser, leaving a fist-sized dent in the door, and breaking the hinges on its side, he stared at the distorted reflections for a few seconds- which had a complete lack of any shadowy figures in them- before falling back onto the bed.

Chuckling, nervously, he thought,

_Must already be going crazy._

****

He heard knocking at his door.

“Hey, new guy? ‘Lina said you might be in here, _furiously masturbating_? Hello?”

He looked up at the door, annoyed. Slowly, he got up and opened it- it was the light-brown one, apparently _not_ a dick. It took off its helmet.

“Hey. I’m Agent New York, but you can call me York. Great to meet you, I heard from ‘Lina that you’re a really… Special guy.” he held out his hand, expecting a handshake.

Arizona stared into his eyes, just long enough to be uncomfortable. “By _special_ , do you mean…”

“I mean she says you landed a few good hits, which means you fucking _decked her_ at least once.”

Arizona smiled slightly. “Well, she definitely paid me back.”

York chuckled.

After a few moments of silence, he said, “So… You’re new here- how’s it going?”

Arizona took a deep breath, and slowly said, “I boarded a strange ship that, during the genocide of the human race by an alien society, is fighting the _human_ insurrection; my five-minute mentor gave me enough bruises for my monthly quota; and some guy is asking me an asinine question, probably with a follow-up about my feelings.”

York raised both eyebrows, interested. With a shit-eating smile, he said, “So, how do you feel about that?”

Despite himself, Arizona couldn’t help but laugh. “Is there an emotion to go with a grimace?”

York shrugged, smiling. “So, I heard that you made your own armour.”

Arizona shrugged. “Designed. With dedicated software that someone else made. Hardly making it.”

York laughed, and shook his head. “Modest as well as honest. I like you.”

_Modest. He should see me on-mission, after taking out a squadron with a well-placed grappling line._

_Well, he’d probably be a little intimidated by the blood. You seem to leave a lot of it._

_That’s true, but-_

He stopped his own thoughts, suspicious. Since when did he refer to himself in second-person?

York interrupted; “Anyway, I have to go get the shit beat out of me by Tex. I’ll see you round, okay?”

He turned to leave, but then turned back, and said, “Never caught your name.”

“Arizona.”

York raised his eyebrows again- evidently, he couldn’t just raise one- and said, “State theme. Nice. But you need a shortening.”

“What?”

“Like ‘Lina. Or Wash. Or Tex. Or-”

Arizona waved him away, “I get the fucking point. Think of one for me. _Don’t_ make it shit.”

York gave him a knowing smile, before jogging away.

****

As York left, Arizona’s smile slowly sunk. When, all by itself, it started encroaching on becoming a frown, he closed the door and turned-

Coming eye-to-eye with piercing blue irises.

He fell back, hyperventilating, falling against the door- less scared than confused. There wasn’t anything there- he was definitely alone- but he had _definitely_ seen some familiar-looking blue eyes just centimetres-

_Calm down. Just your mind playing tricks on you._

Arizona nodded, then quickly narrowed his eyes- there it was again, the second-person thoughts...

He breathed, noticing he hadn’t been.

Trying to do the same thing as he did on the battlefield, he tried to find solutions- whatever the fuck was happening didn’t happen around people, so that was the simple answer- find some people.

_Who?_

There was the scary redhead who’d just beaten, then discarded him; there was the idiot who’d promised to give his fake name a contraction; there was the back-stabbing bitch on the other side of the fucking planet...

Everyone else he knew was _dead_.

He found he didn’t have the will to actually get up. He cried.

In the middle of a sob, he stifled the cry and thought. He was _good_ at that. Not fighting or running or shooting- well, he was very good at each- but he had always been _best_ at thinking. So he thought.

He was depressed, probably, which was understandable in his state- really, he should have the worst case of PTSD, of all time, after the hell of Reaper. Fuck that, though; mental state was easy to manipulate, he just had to calm down, and think.

First, the background information.

_Dead._

Pushing that thought aside, he focused on the other stuff- maybe this was being caused by change of scenery. Was he homesick? It would be difficult for-

_She’s dead._

There it was again- that recurring thought. that line of thinking that went no-where, just into a spiralling depression. That inefficient, unstable, highly-emotional-

_Holy fucking shit she actually dead-_

No, he wouldn’t think about any of that, it wouldn’t be helpful in any way-

_Why the_ fuck _is she-_

She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t. Even if she was, he wouldn't admit it, because it wouldn't be helpful to him in any way.

_Then why are you alone?_

That strange second-person persona brought up a very good question- why _was_ he alone?

_Is it maybe because she’s-_

_Just not here right now. That’s all._

_You’re wilfully deluding yourself, you know-_

_I_ know _that any line of thinking in that direction is nothing but detrimental._

_If she was alive,_ she would be here. _So why isn't she?_

Arizona slammed the back of his head against the metal door, denying. She _had_ to be alive, which meant she _had_ to be with him- she always was- which meant she _was_ with him. Definitely. He just couldn't see her, because… Fuck, because...

Another shadow in his peripheral caught his eye, and Arizona was suddenly very afraid.

_Blue eyes, do you remember how you called them beautiful?_

_She’s dead, she’s dead, I saw her die, I know that she’s dead and-_

She rolled over to the side of the bed, head looking at him upside-down.

_No I’m not. I’m right here, remember? Always was. Always will be._

Arizona closed his eyes.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, from the bed, where he knew no-one was.

****

Arizona burst into a room, was happy to see it was an empty bathroom, and rushed over to a sink. Extremely careful not to look into it, he nearly ripped the faucet off in his haste.

He splashed water over his face. That was what you were supposed to do when you were hallucinating, right? The water could wash the false images from your eyes; leave nothing but the untarnished, cold reality of the world. He gathered a handful of freezing liquid and splashed it over him, soaking his shirt, leaving his hair dripping, and doing nothing to wash clean his vision.

He turned around, screamed, and fell backwards, crawling back away from the figure that had been right behind him.

Slowly, he stopped hyperventilating. She was staring at him, but doing nothing. He looked at her.

She was young, maybe twenty one. Well, no she fucking _was_ twenty one, he _knew_ that. He also knew she was blonde, had long, light hair that ended in curls, had a diamond shaped face, piercing green eyes, a short nose, a small mouth, and that her lips were soft and forceful and loved to shove her tongue against his own-

He knew that her voice was fairly high, quiet, and not really the sort of voice you’d expect from someone who could have easily severed a spinal cord, but yet somehow she could make it sound like the most threatening thing you’d ever heard. And sometimes she could make it sound like friend who’d always be there, who’d never let you down, who would always find a way to cheer you up. And sometimes she could beckon you on with nothing but her breathing, drive you over the edge without any words, just pure-

She kept on just standing there, staring at him slightly bemused, until he cautiously moved a hand to help himself up. She smiled warmly at him. He stumbled over himself, and ran.

Aimlessly, horrified, not daring to glance behind him; he could hear that no-one was following him, but he really didn’t trust his senses right now. Every corner had her behind it; he knew without looking, somehow. His mind was screaming at him, telling him the futility of running, but something in his fight versus flight centre was completely overriding those thoughts.

Eventually, after ten minutes of constant sprinting, and about a dozen confused looks from Freelancer personnel, he had to stop to breathe.

He leant against a wall, and closed his eyes.

She was there. He could feel her; standing just behind him, about to reach out with a comforting hand. When he felt it on his shoulder, he shivered; he reached his other arm across his chest to feel it, but it found nothing there but his own body. He subdued a fearful cry.

He thought to himself, _Why the fuck are you here? Why do I have to torment myself like this?_

She, being a part of his subconscious, answered. _Come on, you know why. You never got closure. Your mind still believes that I’m here, so it’s going to tell you that I am._

_How the fuck do I stop it?_

_Pretty simple. You just have to move on. Get closure._

_How?_

He got no response from himself. He turned around, and looked at her. She was smiling the same warm smile he had seen a thousand times; friendly, forgiving, loving. She spoke without moving her mouth.

_Well, common belief is you have to go through the five stages of loss. We know better, though; you can skip stages, go through different stages, whatever, because it’s different for every person. To each his own. You have to find out for yourself._

He sighed. He was telling himself things he already knew, through his subconscious, and through a mental hallucination of his dead girlfriend. The absurdity of the situation overcame him, and he burst out laughing.

****

Carolina poked her head around the corner, suspicious of the lone laughter. She slowly approached Arizona he saw her standing in front of him, immediately shut the fuck up. She removed her helmet, and stared at him, using interrogative eyes.

“Nothing, I just… Thought of something funny.” It probably didn't help that he said it monotone.

She raised a single eyebrow; “What, did you forget it as soon as I rounded the corner?”

_Wow. You are not on point with your lying, are you? I mean, that is pitiful._

Arizona sighed, on purpose. “Alright, that was a lie. I just… Find it absurd we’re out here fighting other humans in the fucking Human-Covenant war.”

Carolina folded her arms. “Well, that’s not the _only_ thing. See, technically, we’re actually a research program- on how Artificial Intelligence programs can improve combat effectiveness. Fighting the Covenant is too high-risk, but we still need field data, and the UNSC still needs soldiers fighting the insurrection.”

“That makes...More sense.” he already knew that, of course, but it made for a good diversion.

_Nice. 9/10 on the false confession, could use a change of subject to prevent further questioning._

“Another thing. I heard you like to be called ‘Lina. That’s not true, right?”

_Ooh, and the confrontational tone. You really are good at this._

She scowled. “I told you that, fucktard.”

“Yeah, I probably wasn’t listening. I heard that from York.”

“Well, yes, ‘Lina. Short and simple.”

He had successfully changed the subject. Still, he actually was involved in the conversation now, so he didn’t stop: “‘Lina? _Really_? Sounds kind of dumb to me.”

She stared at him, expressionless.

“I mean, it’s too easy. It’s literally the last two syllables of your name; at least get a bit creative. Also, try and stick to one syllable. It makes it easier to shout in a firefight.”

She sighed, and shook her head. “I have used ‘Lina for the last five months. It’s staying.”

“Fine, but I’m not using it. ‘Lina. ‘Lina. _‘Lina_. So stupid.”

She was annoyed now. She growled, “Then what the fuck _would_ you use?”

He thought for a moment. One syllable, contraction of Carolina, while trying not to just use what was already there. _Rol, Lin, Na, Car, Ra, Col, all of these are fucking stupid-_

_Cal. Don’t you think it suits her better?_

_Stay the fuck out of this._

_Remember; I’m here because deep down, you_ want _me to be here._

He internally sighed, submissively. He made himself look up at Carolina, eyes wide with a faked excitement.

“Cal. C-A-L. Shorter than ‘Lina, more intelligent, and I-“

_‘I’? It wasn’t you who came up with it. Well, technically..._

“-I think it suits you better.”

She inhaled angrily, baring her teeth. “No. Absolutely not.”

“It’s either Cal or Col. Those are the best I’ve got.”

“If you call me Cal, I’ll fucking. Call _you_ …” She stared at him, thinking. “...Cunt.”

He paused, showing his disappointment in her. “Cunt? Really? Is that the best you can do?”

“Fuck you. Unlike you, I actually have work to do, so just… Hold on for a few hours until I come up with a better insult.”

She left, irritated, and he chuckled to himself.

****

He slowly realised he was alone with her- _it_ \- his projection- again.

_Why in the fuck would my subconscious be tormenting me?_

_Leftover psychological feelings of attachment that are not being fulfilled. Your’s do seem… Irregular, though. Then again, so was our relationship, since we never really were close to anyone else. Except maybe Bruce, but we both know how that ended…_

His eyes widened, and his heart began racing, knowing what was coming next. He slammed his head into the metal wall for letting himself think about it. Even though his eyes were shut as tight as he could make them, so much that his eyeballs were hurting; he still saw her face, almost white with blood loss, except for the crimson leaking from her lips.

_Not your fault._

Somehow he heard the thought, as if it was being gargled through a mouthful of blood.

He ran again.

He ran in an all-out sprint, knowing it did nothing to help him. His conscious mind wasn’t in full control.

She kept appearing around corners, inside rooms, even once outside the ship, floating against the plexiglass window. Every time she was different. Different clothes, different expressions, different… Different stages of dying. He closed his eyes, but kept running.

He went for longer than he thought he would have. Intentionally blind, he ran straight into metal, shattering his nose against the steel. It bled profusely, and it hurt like a bitch, but he didn’t dare to look at it. Or at anything. He knew she’d be there.

_Fucking shit, this is ridiculous. Who the fuck is in control of me? Myself? Or some ghost of someone I used to fuck? I need to open my fucking eyes, deal with my fucking bloody nose, and get my fucking shit together._

Surprisingly, he obeyed, and found that even though she was still there, he found it okay. It was just him, projecting. He couldn’t hurt himself.

The fear went, but the grief remained. That, he knew, would have to stay. He got his shit together, pinched his oozing nose, and shuffled through the door he had hit.

****

He wiped his face, and spat out the blood dripping down his chin. It only took few seconds for the blood to clot- one of the many benefits of genetic augmentation- and after a few seconds, his nose stopped oozing blood. He looked around; he was in darkness. The bulkhead behind him was solid, without any windows, so the only light that came in was from the massive window that covered the opposite wall of the room, showing the vast expanse of space outside the _Mother of Invention_. The tiny amount of light, coming from the stars and from the lights of ships and stations outside, created long shadows that engulfed much of the room.

He was in a small hangar. It had obviously seen some time without use; a thin layer of dirt covered every surface, and in one of the bays, a rusting and decayed pelican dropship lied. He walked across the upper catwalk, in the middle of the two bays, facing a giant meter-thick plexiglass bulkhead. Facing away from the plant below, it showed only the vast expanse of space.

He jumped down, and took a closer look at the pelican. It wasn’t Freelancer- it wasn’t even UNSC, by the looks of it. It was matte black, even the cockpit windows, and seemed much more streamlined than the normal pelican models.

His imaginary companion walked into view from around the pelican, smirking.

_Come on, you remember this. All-black, sleek and sexy, and you can’t tell by looking, but those engines are designed to dampen sound, almost to complete silence._

He squinted at it. He had never got a clear look at it- all he had seen was a black silhouette on the night sky- but when he reached the back of it and saw the interior, he was sure. It was ONI’s stealth pelican, the same model that had taken him off-world.

_It also took me, remember?_

_Yes. I do._

He wasn’t sure if dead bodies counted, though.

Putting that thought aside, he climbed inside. It was full of shit. Crates upon crates littered the troop bay, making it impossible to get to the cockpit. He wondered how the pilot managed to get out of it.

He wiped a layer of grime from a sticker on one of them, and it read:

_Property of the Office of Naval Intelligence_

_Contents: Operation: Hadúr Recovered Equipment, crate 6 of 35 _

He hesitated before opening it.

_Go on, open it up. It’s probably all of your shit. Your half-made guns, your crappy armour. Or maybe it just some handler’s uniform. Maybe ‘recovered equipment’ is code for body parts, and inside you’ll find some decaying bones. Sophie’s, or one of the countless grunts you killed, or maybe even mine…_

He opened it, eyes squinted in nervous anticipation, but they immediately shot open, in disbelief.

His work. The innumerable creations that he- and, just as much as he had, _she_ had spent years working on. This was just a tiny fraction of it; the full inventory would fill a warehouse, which meant this wasn't from his and her stash. Still, if it was just what ONI spooks had been able to raid from their workshop, it would mean Arizona now had some of his most prized inventions.

Not for the first time since the end of his old life, he found himself missing a tiny data crystal chip that he normally kept in his gun.

Arizona looked through the crates; one contained a drone, autonomous, that flew on tiny little rotors and tiny little wings, controlled itself with a simple targeting program and a few other subroutines, and was armed with a tiny little 5.56mm autocannon. He thumbed the activation switch that he remembered he had put just under the left wing, but nothing happened. He put it back with the others.

He picked out another item; this one wasn’t finished. It was the framework of a large pistol, boxy and fairly ugly, being the prototype version. Wires pushed out of hastily welded metal plates, and a rusty battery pack leaked acid over the gun’s grip. He frowned at it, and tossed it aside.

He reached his hand into another crate, full of half-built weapons, and sloshed it around, searching. His eyes lit up when he spotted one specific item- something he was very sad to lose, and was now elated to find. He pulled out a long metal pole from the crate, about a metre end-to-end, although he knew it could be extended to three times that length. It gleamed with shiny, polished steel, although it was scarred with burns, cracks, cuts, and dents. The two ends seemed the most damaged; they were both burned black.

He backed out of the pelican, gave himself some room, and whirled the staff in his hand. It moved gracefully, with the fluid motion of years of practice. He swung it around himself, causing it to extend out of itself and reach three metres long, and he spun it, smiling. He quickly brought it round, spinning on his heel, before crouching low and sweeping the ground with it. He raised it above his head, let go of it, grabbed it again at one end, and swung it with force, crashing into the floor.

He pulled it back, hovered his finger over a tiny space of metal just off-centre, marked only by a single groove, and felt more than heard a familiar hum from the weapon. He struck it against the side of the pelican, blackened end of the staff hitting it flatly, and where it hit, sparks flew.

With reckless abandon, he turned the end of the staff on himself, rationalising by telling himself he was testing if it still had its old power. As soon as it touched his arm, his arm snapped tight, contracting his muscles. It was also painful, but only initially, and Arizona soon had the staff back in his hand.

With a practiced, fluid motion, he thumbed the activation groove on the staff, and slid his hand across the metal. As he did, first a small blue light gleamed at both ends of the stick, then it became more and more luminous, and finally, it began to make loud cracking noises that pierced his ears.

The air crackled with electricity, causing Arizona to grin massively, prior emotions forgotten for a single moment of peace.


	5. 1.5: Run the Gauntlet

“Just to introduce myself, you know?”

Carolina rolled her eyes. She realised she had been doing that a lot lately, with Arizona. “No. You’ll get fucking decimated out there. This is combat between professionals, and while you’re definitely… Promising, you don’t have the training _or_ the experience.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s what this is fucking for, right? Training? And experience?”

She’d had enough. “Listen, you stubborn fuck. If you go into this thing, I think that there is a fair chance that you’ll die. Seriously. And if you do, then I, who have been given the task of acquainting you to Project Freelancer, will have that held against me.”

He narrowed his eyebrows, not sure if she was serious. It didn’t really matter to him, though. He’d made his decision. “Yeah, well, I’ve already got my position confirmed with the Counsellor guy, and my name is on-” he pointed to a giant holographic screen above the main arena, “That leaderboard.”

She looked, scoffed, and shook her head. “Fuck, I don’t even care anymore.”

He smiled, and then put on his helmet, seeing the many sensors and scanners appear on his vision. He actually had customised it; hastily, but it would do for today. Carolina did the same, somehow managed to look annoyed under an entire suit of MJOLNIR, and they both headed down to the fighting floor.

There they met the other Freelancers. York gave him a surprised look, but still managed a smile, while the others either didn’t care, or eyed him suspiciously. He met their glances, and tried to look positive.

Before long, the Counsellor entered the arena, and began listing off a fuck-long list of rules and regulations. By the third, Arizona had lost interest. Which made him unaware as to why, by the end of the litany, everyone seemed infuriated. The Counsellor quickly walked away.

Arizona looked to Carolina, who remained still. Eerily still. Nervous, he said, “What’s happening?”

She turned to look at him, disgusted. “Team doubles. I’m with you. While Tex... Gets York.” Her tone of voice made it clear how she felt about that.

He was about to try and respond, when a loud synthetic voice rang out: “Attention, all combatants; clear the arena floor. Head to assigned entry points. Be ready for battle in 100 seconds.” Carolina stormed off towards a door, and he followed.

He heard someone following him. He turned, and said, “Hey, you-”

He stopped, and deflated when he saw that it was his mental ghost. She smiled at him.

_Come on, you’re not going to fight without me, are you? We always fight together. We’re a team._

He didn’t respond- just tried to ignore her. If Carolina had heard him, she simply didn’t care.

****

They walked down ramps into small rooms under the coliseum, where their various weapons and equipment lay. Carolina’s side of the room had barely anything there; just a pistol, a large knife, and a giant gravity hammer. She picked it up with ease, and began testing her swings.

Arizona’s side was a lot fuller; on the table he had there were about twenty different guns, five melee weapons, and a massive amount of grenades and other equipment.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of bringing in that heap.”

He turned to her, shrugging. “Nobody told me what the map would be like. CQC, long-range, bright, dark, lots of cover, sparse cover-”

“-I get the point. You realise that we don’t know until we’re in there, right?”

He squinted, appalled. “That’s pretty fucking dumb.”

She shrugged dismissively.

“So… Should I just get general stuff?”

She shrugged again.

_Your new friend had a short temper._

_Fuck off, let me think._

_Why would I do that?_

Sighing, Arizona picked out his weapons: this was a non-live-fire exercise, so he’d only brought up non-lethal weapons.The obvious answer was the LAER.

The Laser-Assisted-Electrical-Rifle had the appearance of a short, fat sniper-rifle. The heavy body stretched out as far as a DMR’s, except in this, the barrel was far more bulky. The front section was faded white, while the large grip, heavy stock, and short-range scope were dark grey.

The thing that really distinguished it from any other gun was the barrel- the reason it was so bulky was because it wasn’t a long, rifle pipe to stabilise bullets, it was a small laser generator. Inside the barrel, optical amplifiers lined the hollow chamber, ready to receive electromagnetic radiation and drastically increase the output. Once amplified, this laser- which, while powerful enough to rip the electrons out of atmospheric gases, could only singe the skin- would ionise the air, creating an electrically conductive, laser-induced plasma channel.

Through that, the gun would then send electricity. Anywhere from 10^9 volts at a few milliamps, to 10^8 volts at 1 amp.

The first was a standard taser shot- tensed muscles, momentary anguish, low risk of permanent damage.

The second would make the target’s brain explode out of their eye sockets.

Arizona set it to the former.

The _other_ electrical weapon was his shock-staff, which he clipped to his belt, after checking that one was also on the low amperage settings; he didn't want to accidentally kill his teammates in the first combat exercise.

_Well, if you want to introduce yourself properly…_

Pushing those thoughts aside, he also acquired a light combat pistol, loaded with Freelancer-issued training rounds, and a few grenades- two shock, one concussion.

He glanced at the table again, forlorn; he knew he couldn’t use the good stuff. If he knew he would be in tight hallways, he could use concussive tripmines; if he knew he would be in open-air, he could use smart-mortars; if he knew he would be in large rooms, he could use ricochet grenades…

So many wasted opportunities.

_You’ll get to use them to kill hundreds more people later. Right now, focus on showing up everyone else._

Without noticing, he grinned behind his helmet.

“Twenty seconds! Fucking hurry up!”

Carolina was waiting at the doors- sort of like an airlock system for the arena. He joined her inside, and saw the bulkheads slowly _hiss_ closed after him.

“So… Any tactics?”

She tilted her head curiously.

“I mean, we’re supposed to work as a team, right?”

She groaned, “Fucking… Yes, technically.”

“So what? Who takes point, do we try and flank or stay together, do-”

“-So, I’m not going to insult you, but you are incredibly shit- compared to me- so go somewhere else and let me do this alone. I hate to sound cliche, but you’ll only slow me down.”

Defensive, he said, “That still sounded a lot like an insult. Also, I’m pretty sure-”

“Agents: battle commences in five-”

Carolina adopted a sprinter’s pose, ready to pounce through the opening.

“Four-”

Arizona brought up his bulky, heavy rifle and aimed it at the door- not sure what he should be expecting from the holo-arena.

“Three-”

As he thought about it, he wasn't even sure what ‘training ammo’ meant.? Rubber bullets? Did you have to pretend you were dead if you got hit?

“Two-”

Arizona looked to his left, where Carolina was rearing back, about to explode forward. He looked forward, at the door, which was already unlocked and was starting to open. Something made him look right.

She was there.

_What, did you expect me to watch from the viewing deck? Maybe I can even help you out a little._

_How the fuck can a subconscious part of me help the conscious part of me? You know what I know!_

_Yeah, and I know you know that’s bullshit. I can pick up on tiny little clues that the conscious mind misses, I can-_

She- _it_ \- was cut off when the door exploded open, and Carolina shot through it, faster than was imaginable. Literally. Arizona actually couldn’t comprehend her going that fast. He saw her hit a wall directly in front of them, landing on it with her feet, and then saw her shoot out the left.

When he stepped in, she was gone, and Arizona was amazed to find that the arena had turned into a  military base. He slowly walked forward, and touched a wall that hadn’t been there when he entered. It was hard, felt exactly like stone should feel like, but also… Shone. He gave it a light tap, and saw a thin white light shine off of where he had touched.

Solid holograms. Holy fuck, he knew Freelancer was big-budget, but this was fucking excessive.

His thoughts ended abruptly when a figure burst around the corner, rifle raised.

**** Arizona ran, ducked under a burst of fire, and then slid into an alcove. He was in a straight hallway, with a series of cover points on one wall, and his only way out- that is, not through the hulking suit of armour spraying whatever the fuck it was at him- was ten metres away from him, without any cover in between. He could hear the intermittent bursts getting closer.

He checked himself. Trapped in cover, but he did have the advantage in close-quarters; he could just wait for the assailant to come to him.

That idea was trashed when he heard a soft click, followed by a _swoosh_ , followed by a small metal canister landing right in front of him.

He had only a few seconds to think; cover or attacker? He heard another burst, judged it to be only a few metres away, and ran for the attacker.

They were clad in grey armour, standard Mark VI male, with yellow highlights, and were actually further away from Arizona than the way out was. But he was already committed now.

Arizona saw the battle rifle aim at his left, and sidestepped right, still running full sprint. The first two shots of the burst flew by him, but the shooter corrected his aim mid-way through, and the final shot hit Arizona in his left forearm. It immediately went numb.

Before they could shoot again, Arizona used his still-functioning arm to pull out his staff, then he ducked down low, swung the staff around him, extending it, and brought it up at the attacker’s face. The opponent blocked it easily, but then his arm jolted backward, involuntary tensing, as electricity surged into his arm.

Arizona smiled. The grey guy took only a moment to recover, though, and in a second had a pistol out, ready to fire. Arizona lunged, punching the staff’s end into his gut, and making him double over in pain. Or maybe electrocution. He stood over the body, which was still moving slightly, and then prodded it again with the staff.

After an initial spasm, the figure held up its hands, surrendering. He fumbled with something under his helmet, then spoke. “Jesus, man, stop! _Fuck_! Who the fuck uses electricity?”

“Well, I don't really know what this training ammo does.” He looked at his arm, which was covered in a sticky pink cement-like mix, immobile. He began trying to break it off.

“...You;re the rookie, right?”

“What gave me away?”

The man sighed. “ _Every_ newbie we get is already better than everyone else. At least you talk. Do me a favour, and beat the fuck out of Texas, okay?”

Slowly tensing his arm, Arizona said, “No promises, but I’ll try. Arizona, by the way.”

The guy laughed. “Wash. Washington. Oh, and if you find my partner, big guy, goes by Maine, tell him to try teamwork next time.”

“...Any tips?”

“Yeah, when you get a guy on the floor, don’t-”

Something about Wash’s tone seemed… Arrogant, like he knew something Arizona didn’t. Not taking any chances, Arizona quickly cut Wash off by splattering his head with pink paint, then slammed into an alcove, not sure what to expect.

From around cover, a hand closed around his throat, ripped him out of cover, and threw him into the wall.

“Maine, right?”

The hulking mass of MJOLNIR EVA armour, white and brown, growled back. As in, actually growled; it sounded a little like a tiger and a little like a bear.

When it charged Arizona again, he jumped up, and kicked off Maine’s chest, then off of the wall behind him.

The brute stumbled backwards, grasping at empty air as Arizona flipped over his head, pirouetting like an armoured ballerina.

On Maine’s backside, Arizona quickly grabbed his pistol, aimed it behind him, and fired three quick shots.

Maine turned, covered in solidifying pink goo, then fell over forwards.

  


Sliding into cover, Arizona entered a large open space, with catwalks and multiple tiers, surrounding a large central circular platform. He was on the bottom, completely exposed. He tried to sneak around the edges, to the other door, when a shot rang out. Pink shit burst onto the wall behind him.

He rolled, judged where the shot came from, and aimed with the LAER. His circular reticule swept across the upper catwalks. Nothing.

He tried to stay silent, and crept towards a thick pillar, still aimed at where he thought the shot came from. When he reached cover, he turned behind it, calmed his breathing, slowed his heartbeat, and activated one of his helmet’s function through the neural uplink in the back of his skull.

His ears began to tickle, as sound poured in, ten times louder than it should be. He heard his breathing above all else, ragged and quick, and after that his own stomach, strangely. But also, mixed in with those sounds, were very quiet footfalls.

He stayed still, trying to judge where they were. It sounded close, very close, just slightly to his left-

He very quickly turned off the amplifier, and blind-fired around the corner. He swung out, aiming, only to be knocked back by a purple blur.

Arizona struggled as an arm closed around his neck, strangling him. Another arm grabbed his right, holding it back, while his left clawed uselessly.

Right in his sensitive ear, a girl shouted, “Come on! Shoot you fucking tard!”

“I don’t have a clear shot, South!” responded a male voice. From tone, sound of voice, and circumstance, they were probably siblings.

South, who was probably the one strangling him, shouted in anger, trying to control Arizona. He shook, used his legs as leverage, and pushed them both backwards. She hit the wall, but kept a tight grip on Arizona's neck. He twisted them both, put his feet on the wall and kicked himself upwards, fell on top of her, and then crushed her arm under his body weight. Her arm relaxed for a fraction of a second, and he used it to escape.

He rolled off of her, bringing out the electro-staff, and rushed her before the other one could shoot. He swung with the staff, she dodged, and then she threw her fist at him; he blocked with the side of the staff, tried to jab it in her stomach, but she dodged again, grabbing it, and pulling him towards her. When he stumbled forward, she kicked him to the ground, but not before he had a chance to stick a small boxy device to her midsection..

Arizona groaned, in pain, but smiled, happy with himself.

“Good enough for you, North?” she pulled out a pistol, leveled it at his head, and exploded in a burst of arcing and crackling blue light.

Arizona leapt and rolled over to his LAER, scooped it up, and aimed upwards. Through the reticule, he saw a blue figure aiming back, and they both exchanged shots while running to cover. North found it first, and used it to spray.

Arizona’s weapon was a lot more threatening, though.

Every trigger pull came with three distinct parts: first, a blue light would create a line from the barrel to the target, with near-perfect accuracy; then, from the rapid heating of the gas caught inside the laser, a sonic boom would shatter any nearby eardrums, and scare the shit out of anyone being shot at; finally, the blue would light up with the power of a lightning bolt, as electricity surged through to disorientate, maim, or obliterate the thing at the other end.

South was getting up, cursing. She shouted something about electricity.

The four inward arrows of the reticule seemed to glide toward South, towards her centre of mass, and rested on her upper torso. As soon as he was sure the gun was stable, pointed in exactly the right direction, and that South wasn’t going to move, he pulled and held the trigger.

The awesome power of the weapon unleashed itself onto South Dakota, _cracking_ and echoing across the room, causing her to spasm and fall and curse.

Hearing North shout, Arizona swung out of cover. He fired two more bursts of electrified plasma at where North was hiding- his shots looking more like intense beams. One went past the cover, but the other hit it dead on- electricity conducting through the metal cover and into North, who screamed out in surprise.

Reaching back, he lobbed a grenade at the spot, over the short wall protecting North, and aimed with the DMR, ready to finish him. _One, two, three, four, five…_ The grenade went off, in a flash of electricity, and North shouted in pain, but he didn’t come out of cover. _Clever_.

South was getting up, so Arizona aimed at her with his pistol, and shot paint right in her chest. She went rigid, and fell over. He aimed up at North’s spot, ready to fire.

He turned when a door opened on the other side of the room, just out of his view. Nothing seemed to come out.

He aimed back at North, but jumped away when he noticed someone literally right next to him.

“Fucking shitcu-”

_What? Nervous?_

“-nt.” _If you are me, why the hell do I mainly just taunt myself?_

_Well, it’s more like I’m you, envisioning me. So I do what you’d expect me to do. Which is taunt you._

_Well, I’m fucking busy here, so just fuck off while I do this. Torment me later._

_What, don’t want my help?_

_How the fuck can you help me! You don’t even have eyes!_

She grinned. He noticed, even though he wasn’t looking at her anymore.

_We just talked about this, I notice stuff you don’t. Like how there’s a shadow with no owner over on the far catwalk, slowly moving._

Arizona looked, cursed under his breath, and saw a black figure moving stealthily in the darkness. He aimed at it.

It waved its arms, frantically. He hesitated. Whatever it was, it had seen him, and wasn’t shooting at him. Also, it wasn’t even going towards him. It was heading towards North.

_Yeah, to kill him first, then go to work on you. Shoot, idiot._

He shot, and the black figure toppled over. It fell from the catwalk, landing across from him, without any of its limbs moving. Slowly, he walked out of cover, towards it.

It wasn’t black anymore. It was a seafoam-green, aqua-marine, whatever the fuck colour, with a rogue helmet, splattered with bright pink cement. He inhaled sharply.

_Fuck._

_Oh come on, it was her fault._

_I feel like you’re partly to blame for this._

_What? I was trying to help. Look, I’ll even help right now. The air just to the left of you is shimmering._

He looked, and saw the air shimmering. Like gas was escaping from some tiny hole in the floor. It looked slightly like it was moving… Actually, he could mind of make out a figure, like a person aiming at-

He ducked under the shot, aimed at the shimmer, and fired into it. It ducked underneath, moving quickly towards him, probably about to stab him.

He rolled away from it, pulling out the staff, and swung wildly. It hit something solid, and he looked up at the shimmering air that had caught his weapon.

Like it was peeling off, the shimmer revealed a figure. First the hand, closed tightly around the end of the staff, with sparks of electricity going everywhere. Then the rest of the cloak dissipated, showing a seven-foot tall mass of black armour. Female. He guessed that this was Agent Texas.

The monster wore a standard Mark VI helmet, but somehow, it was a thousand times more intimidating than the other Mark VI helmets. Still holding the staff in one hand, Tex used the other to grab it, and wrenched it from Arizona’s grip.

She twirled the staff in one hand, admiring it, and tapped the electric end. If the beast was in pain, she didn’t show it.

Slowly, Arizona reached for the electric gun, hoping that would have more of an effect; he got a grip on it when the end of the staff was thrust towards him. He dodged, knowing better than to try and block it, but had to keep trying to dodge when another blow was sent his way, then another-

He stopped moving backward, and rolled forward, thinking that at least it wouldn’t be expected. During the roll, he grabbed the electric rifle, brought it into his hands, and when he stopped rolling right at the black Freelancer’s feet, he shot her legs, point blank range.

She hit the gun downwards, and it fired at her foot- the bolt spewed out into her and then burst into a hundred arcs of electric light, spreading blue all over her lower body; she fell, but then she coiled a hand around Arizona’s shin, electrocuting him as well. His legs convulsed, sending him stumbling back.

Tex slowly got up, and turned, focusing on remaining in control of her body. She saw Arizona trying to regain his footing. She leant back, aimed the staff, and threw it like a javelin at him.

Arizona looked up just in time to see the end of his own weapon, sparkling with pretty blue light, hit him right in the face. His helmet protected it from the blow; it did nothing to stop the electricity, which surged through his face. His jaw clamped down, biting into his tongue, as he fell onto the ground.

He managed to pull his teeth apart, tasting blood in his mouth, before his body stopped working and his entire visor was filled with pink.

From somewhere inside, he heard Kelly laughing to herself.


	6. 1.6: Wounds Soon Scar

**1.6: Wounds Soon Scar**

****

Sweating, Arizona limped past the others. Some regarded him with hate; others with amazement; all with disbelief. First, he had personally beaten two Freelancers and wounded a third, and  _ then _ eliminated his own teammate.

But more importantly, he had hit Agent Texas. With a fluky shot that didn't even accomplish anything, before she had smashed his face in with his own weapon.

Apparently, all of that meant nothing to the five Freelancers in the locker room with him.

He darted through them, before any of them had a chance to try and strike up a conversation. He had to get away, fast, before-

_ -Before what? Your dead ex shows up? _

_ Actually, I was thinking about the murderous psychopath that I just shot. You know, the cyan one, not the black one. Although I guess the black one too. _

He turned his head, and saw _her_ falling into step with him. She looked so fucking _real_. He felt like he could reach out and touch her- actually, considering how deluded he was right now, he probably could- and he could actually sense her next to him. He could imagine her perfect smile, her gleaming eyes, her smooth blonde hair…

...And the blood. He’d associated her beautiful face with so much blood.

He raised a hand to his helmet, trying to wipe the tears away.

_ Every. Fucking. Minute. Why the fuck can’t you leave me alone for just a little while? _

_ You know why. _

He grabbed his helmet by the neck, ripped it off his head, and breathed deep, frustrated. He realised he wasn’t walking anywhere in particular, and decided to head to the hangar with his stuff in it; the techs should have brought his gear back by now, and he should probably get to sorting through the-

_ Don’t change the subject. You can’t ignore me, any more than you could ignore those nagging doubts you had when when we killed the VP. _

_ How the fuck do- _

_ Because  _ you  _ know. I’m  _ not _ me, understand? I’m you. _

He looked at her, trying to understand her- no,  _ it _ . It was a part of his subconscious; it itself was very clear on that point. His own subconscious, trying to-  _ what _ ? Feebly grasp onto any small pieces that he still had left of her?

_ Well done! You figured it out! Now that you know why, I’ll disappear and leave you in peace. _

He didn’t believe that for a second. When he looked to his side, she was still there, grinning. She leaned in close, and Arizona was surprised to find he could  _ smell _ her. Sweat, and dirt, from three hours of trudging through the forest. And, of course, the ever-present blood. It was the last smell he had of her.

_ You can’t live without me. _

He let out a quiet involuntary cry, shaking with half grief and half fear. He felt her eyes on him; he felt her laughing at him.

That was when he realised- accepted- that she wasn’t the person he had known.  _ She  _ would never laugh at him;  _ she  _ would extend a friendly arm, or give a caring hug, or do  _ something _ to make him feel just a little bit better.

This version of her just laughed. She was only himself, reflected back.

_ Like that’ll make you feel any better about yourself. _

He was a little surprised when he couldn’t tell which of him had thought that.

****

After carefully removing her armour, so as to not kill him when she beat him, and spending five minutes beating the crap out of a punching bag, so as to not beat him when she berated him, and then lying still, trying to not berate him, Agent Carolina was going to kill him.

After interrogating a few of the guards on surveillance duty about his whereabouts, she reached the blast door to his hiding spot, spent less than thirty seconds on the lock, and entered Hangar 14.

The first thing she noticed was that it was fucking dark. The only light came from the giant window- not that much, as Reach’s star was on the other side of the ship right now- and from the hallway behind her, which made her shadow stretch out across the entire bay.

Slowly, she walked forward. She descended a short flight of stairs, walked around a few consoles, and then behind the pelican; she gave a wide berth to the various crates, which she now knew were full of random crap that was liable to explode; she went to the behind of the pelican, to its open troop bay door, and walked inside.

The troop bay was completely empty, but the door to the cockpit was open, and from inside, she could see a soft glow, while she could hear a very faint… Sobbing?

She stepped forward, winced when she heard the loudness of her foot against the metal, and heard scrambling.

Arizona came out, a silhouette in the dark.

“Hey, Carolina, listen, I am really sorry about the shooting you thing.”

She narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “Why.”

“What? Because I shot you?”

“You’re not the kind of person to apologise for something that wasn’t your fault.”

He stayed silent for a few seconds. “You’ve known me for 36 hours.”

Cocking her head, she said, “I’m a good judge of character.”

He laughed, a little too loudly. “So, what, I can’t say sorry?”

“I went off on my own, came back in black, which is the colour that I told you belonged to Tex, who was on the enemy team. You had every reason to shoot me.”

“Yes?”

Interrogative, she asked, “So why the fuck are you apologising.”

He flailed his arms; “What the  _ fuck  _ did you come here for, then?”

She thought. Why  _ had _ she come? “Honestly, to punch you a few times. I had this image of you being all defiant and unapologetic.”

He laughed, this time a little too forcefully. “Yeah, well, I’m not really in the mood to be ‘defiant’ right now.”

“Why?” She said simply.

He stared at her, silent again. “I’d rather not-”

“Shut up, that never works. Also, can we get a little light? It’s dark as di-”

The lights came on, and Carolina saw Arizona’s face. It was white; like it had been drained of blood. That was on contrast to his eyes, which were bright red, and bloodshot, from what must have been hours of crying. His hair was glistening with sweat.

She stared at him, incredulous. “What the fuck happened?”

He laughed nervously, looking away from her. “Nothing, nothing hap-” he regained control of his voice, made it a point to look her in the eye, and calmly said, “ _ Okay _ , so obviously something happened. But it’s really nothing to get concerned about, I…” he trailed off, focused on a point just over Carolina’s shoulder, and stayed silent.

Looking back, and seeing nothing, she waved at him.

“No, she’s just-  _ I was saying _ that I can handle it. It’s fine.” He smiled, devoid of any hint of happiness.

Carolina rubbed her eyes, thinking. “So, you’re fucked up, in some way, and you don’t want help for it, which is cool.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

She looked him in the eye. He quickly looked away. She said, “Can I at least try and-”

“ _ No _ .”

“Why?”

“... It’s… Personal.”

“Agent Arizona, we have unisex showers. We don’t have personal things.”

“Really?  _ Unisex showers _ ? What if-”

She cut in, angry now. “Don’t change the fucking subject!” She calmed herself, and delicately, said, “All I want is to help.”

He laughed. This time, it was genuine, although it was also scathing. “Yeah, the take-no-shit serious-as-fuck half-robot, half-shark wants to talk about  _ feelings _ .”

“The half-robot half-shark also cares about her team.”

He shook his head, incredulous. “ _ 36 hours. _ ”

She took a step forward. She put a hand on his shoulder, and pushed him down onto one of the troop bay seats. He didn’t react.

“Just let me ask you some questions.”

He sighed.

“So, some form of depression, right?”

He shrugged, smirking.

“Homesick?”

He laughed again, bitterly.

She frowned. “Alright, so what? Missing someone?”

“If they would  _ fucking leave me alone _ , I might.” For some reason, he directed the remark at the wall opposite him, and scowled at its response.

She knelt down, making him look at her. “Let me help you.”

He looked her dead in the eyes. “You  _ can’t _ .”

She shouted, “I can fucking try!”

“No, you fucking can’t, because you can’t even fucking-” he cut himself off.

She lit up, thinking she’d had a breakthrough. “Can’t even fucking what?”

He rolled his head around, searching for the right answer. “You can’t… See… What…”

He trailed off, focusing on something else.

Grinding her teeth, Carolina tried to remain calm. She started to speak; “And what exactly-”

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT THE FUCK  _ YOU  _ THINK I SHOULD  _ FUCKING  _ DO!” He screamed at an empty seat, furious.

He stared at it for a few seconds, while Carolina was dumbstruck, before he broke down into angry tears.

Not knowing what to do, she reached out a hand and touched his arm. He slapped it away, and looked up with weary, anguished eyes.

He started laughing. First the sobs turned to chuckles, then to giggle, and then to a fully-consuming, body convulsing spasm of uncontrollable laughter. He tried to speak in between bouts of guffawing: “I’m  _ fucking insane _ !  _ Literally _ , this time!”

He managed to calm himself down for a second, but he looked like he was on the verge of revealing the funniest punchline ever. “My girlfriend died less than two months ago, right in front of me, leaving with me with crushing depression, which has spiralled out of control into constant sadness-” his voice began to lower, becoming more serious- “Constant anger-” now it was almost monotone, but delivered with a dark humour- “And constant hallucinations of her. Sometimes alive and well. Sometimes just of her bloody corpse.”

By the end, his voice was that of serial killer to their victim.

“Sorry, I guess the hilarity got to me. Don’t let that fool you; I’m mostly in agonising sadness, or incoherent rage.” he deadpanned.

Carolina stared at him, sighed deeply, and then took a seat opposite him. “I... “

“Now, it seems to me that you have two options.” He leaned forward, fingers interlocked. “You either try and help me out of this out-of-control insanity, and blame yourself fully when I throw myself out of an airlock. Or, you walk away, forget that this ever happened, and I’ll make it look like an accident so you don’t have to feel guilty.” He smiled. It was ghastly genuine.

He looked to the side again. “Yes, I know what she’s going to do... No, because there’s no fucking point anymore, is there? She already knows I-”

She slapped him. He grinned sarcastically. “You know, I never realised how good physical abuse is for a mental illness! Now I know, I’ll just regularly slam my head into the walls!”

Carolina sat down again. She put her head in her hands, and quietly said, “Listen, we are not leaving the pelican until we find out a way to help you. I’m not going to let you fucking kill yourself.”

He sighed, now pitying her. It was a strange feeling. “I really don't want to force you into this. This isn't your problem.”

“ _ Fuck that _ , we’re going to stay here until you can-”

FILSS blared; “ _ Attention all Freelancer personnel; go to alert level amber. Prepare for immediate slipspace jump. All agents, prepare for combat insertion in roughly twenty four hours _ .”

Carolina stared. “You have  _ got  _ to be  _ fucking _ kidding me!”

Arizona dropped his head, convulsing from laughter, at a situation he found fucking hilarious.

****

_ So, now you’ve revealed your secret, how about you get rid of yourself? _

_ Fucking shit, I’m having suicidal thoughts already? _

_ I don’t know, do suicidal thoughts from me count? _

_ You are me. So yes. _

_ Well then I guess the answer is yes. Luckily, though, you instantly dismissed the idea- you’ve got a while before you actually start giving the thoughts any… Thoughts. _

He sighed. Carolina was staring at him, and he felt like she could hear his conversation. With himself.

He looked at her. “So… You probably have some stuff to do to prepare for-”

“No. I don’t, but even if I did, this is more important.” To give her credit, she wasn’t giving him any of her pity. She just looked determined.

Arizona exhaled, rubbing his forehead. “Well then… I have no fucking idea what to do. You?”

She frowned. “I guess just tell me about it. From the beginning.”

He stared at her.

_ Don’t you fucking do it. _

He bit his lip.

_ I will give you a fucking seizure if you do. _

He sighed, relenting. “It’s my subconscious doing it. I can’t accept that my girlfriend is dead, so it’s making up a version of her so that it doesn’t have to.”

She squinted. “You know this…”

“She told me.”

“ _ She _ ?”

He waved his arm. “ _ Her _ . She’s actually conscious of the fact that she’s not real. Doesn’t help in any way.”

_ I’m as real as everything else. All that you can sense is what your brain interprets from the electrical impulses it receives from the sensory organs. Sight isn't real, sound isn't real; it’s the brain that makes it real, to the consciousness. So is it really fair to say that I’m not real, when  _ nothing  _ is? _

_ Yes, shut the fuck up. _

Carolina rolled her head around, thinking. “So what I’m getting is, you need to have closure on her death to get better.”

He shrugged unhelpfully.

She leant forward. “Okay then. Tell me about her.”

“What?”

“Does it make you deaf, too?”

“How the fuck would me telling you about her bring me closure?”

She leant in: “Well, you describe her, you describe how you met, you get your brain completely focused on the memories of her…” She rolled her hand around, as if to show cause and effect. “...And then you tell me about her death. Maybe saying it out loud, to someone, will make you think it’s true.” She smiled, confident.

_ You know, I’m not sure that I want some bitch knowing my life story, just- _

_ You’re not her. _

“Her name was Kelly.”

He breathed.

“We met when I was introduced to the project-”

“More detail.”

He rubbed his face. “We met a few weeks after the program started, when I was ten and she was nine, after-”

“ _ More. Detail.” _

He took a moment to stare at her. Why the fuck was she doing this? He was trying to make it easier for her- whatever the fuck was happening, it definitely wouldn’t work- but  _ what the hell _ .

_ And you do seem to revel in making people feel uncomfortable, almost as much as you do when people get that genuine look of fear in them. _

He stretched his neck. “I was born to an insurrectionist mother and a UNSC spy working from within the United Rebel Front. When she found out and threatened to expose him, he had her extracted by force, and detained in an ONI facility. During Operation TREBUCHET, she was interrogated- you know, the kind of interrogation that leaves you with the brain functions of a 3 year old- and sometime after that she got pregnant. Being barely mentally functional, I assume that she was raped.”

He stopped for a moment, allowing her to take it in. She had that, ‘holy shit what the fuck,’ look on her face, which he  _ did _ have to admit, he took a sadistic pleasure in seeing.

_ You’re an arrogant cunt. _

_ And you’re a figment of my imagination. Should I continue with story time? _

_ Fuck it. We both know it won’t work. _

“She died before I could remember her. Officially, from cancer, although cancer doesn’t normally take the form of blunt force trauma to the skull. The ONI agent, my father, was a controlling, perfectionist, abusive fucker, who started training me to be a spook as soon as I could talk. That was on Kholo. Now, in 2539, the covenant attacked. Pretty fucking traumatising, considering I watched my dad bleed to death. I barely made it out into a refugee centre off-world, with full-body burns and bullet wounds. At the same time, an ONI black ops program trying to be copycats of SPARTAN-II was looking for recruits.”

Not for the first time, he noticed that Freelancers wore MJOLNIR, had gruelling training and augmentations, and was even fighting the insurrection. “So, exactly like Project Freelancer, I guess.”

Carolina narrowed her eyes slightly, but didn’t say anything.

He breathed in. “The program wanted me. Choice DNA, like with the original Spartans. So, after running through a fucking  _ holocaust _ , getting burns all over my body by being a few kilometres away from a  _ glassing beam _ , and getting fucking  _ railed _ by a stray bullet, they abducted me from the recovery ward and shipped me to Reach.”

Carolina seemed to be coming out of her stunned silence. She leant in, and gently said, “So you met her there? At this program?”

He laughed, bitterly. “Yeah, after nine months of solitary confinement, running away, and… I think, like, six dead handlers. Three people with a butter knife. My first kill was when I was eleven.”

“After that, we met.”

He could feel  _ her _ watching him. She was judging; she didn’t want the story told. He was definitely going to tell it- she couldn’t stop him- but she could make it hell for him all the same.

“She was great. Compassionate, kind, had that sort of brutal honesty about her. Not in the dickish way; she just wasn’t the kind of person who lied to make you feel better. She was  _ brilliant _ .”

_ Way to layer it on. Compliments won’t make me go any easier on you. _

“Me, her, and this other guy called Bruce got together. We had a three-man team, there was another four-man team, and there was a fucking  _ rivalry _ . Like, I actually ended up stabbing a guy for it. It didn’t help that the program actively encouraged the tension between teams.”

_ Not unlike what’s happening here, right now, between the alpha bitches. _

He gritted his teeth. “I got in a… Personal rivalry with a girl on the other team. It got pretty intense, but it’s not really important to what we’re doing now. Just know that we… We fucking hated each other. The only thing keeping us from slitting the other’s throat in their sleep- and believe me, it came close- was this kind of… Respect.”

_ Bullshit. You respected me; the only thing you felt for her was pure fucking  _ hate.  _ The only reason you two didn’t assassinate the other was your own fucking pride. _

“No, not respect. More like… determination. We couldn’t just kill each other; we had to prove we were better than them. So, we kept fighting, it always ended in close draws, and we kept hating the other more.”

He took a moment to breathe, deep and slowly. Honestly, he was surprised he was keeping himself together so well. Carolina was still staring, quietly, with that look like she was sure she was a fucking genius for suggesting such a brilliant cure.

It wasn’t going to work. That wasn’t even his cynicism creeping in: he fucking  _ knew _ that it wasn’t going to work. It did feel slightly good to get it out, though; he couldn’t deny that.

He carried on. “So, when we were about sixteen, we started going out of the base. We started going on missions, in our teams, but it was still a competition. One time, we were actually pitted against each other. Each team had a goal, and completing it would fuck the other. We lost, and Bruce took a bullet-” he stopped.

_ It’s a shame the fucker didn't take it in the spine. Death was too fucking good for him. _

Arizona looked at Carolina for a long time, thinking. He wasn’t even sure what he was thinking about, so he just looked at her. Eventually, he sighed. He looked at the pelican, remembering how they had gleamed when they fell down around him; how they’d screamed overhead, searching.

“I… I should probably talk about Bruce. He… We were friends. He wasn’t very skilled, so I kind of acted as a mentor to him- that led to a closeness, which led to weird feelings for each other, which led to a  _ very  _ weird shower after a combat exercise.”

That got Carolina’s attention. She couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, smiling.

_ Yeah, let’s talk about things that were in your ass. That’ll cure mental depression. When you think about Bruce, what do you remember? His cock? Or that tiny little grin that was playing on his lips when he pulled the trigger, and the- _

_ What the fuck do you think? What do you think I remember about you? The lips, or the  _ blood _? _

He didn’t smile back. “At the same time, me and Kelly were getting closer. In short, I was in a love triangle, and slowly, the other two edges began to fucking  _ despise _ each other. It… It ripped us apart. It ripped me apart.”

_ Really? I think that I was the one ripped apart. You know, when the 14.5x114mm round literally did tear me apart. Or did you forget? _

He was crying. Not in sobs, nor in fits of spasmodic cries, but just quiet, almost silent breathing, with heavy tears cascading down his cheeks. He wiped at them, but more came.

For a brief moment, his eyes met Carolina’s. They were afraid, concerned- but they weren't sorry for him. She wasn’t giving him any pity; his problems were his own, and she’d already made it clear that she would try and help him, but she wasn’t going to let herself be affected by it.

Something in that resembled something he had known in Kelly.

Through heavy breaths, through streaming tears, and through the mocking presence of this fucking  _ imposter _ , he forced himself to keep talking. For whatever there was of Kelly in Carolina. “I had to-  _ had  _ to choose. I picked her. And Bruce, he-”

Arizona moved a palms to wipe at his face, and it stayed there, hanging off his cheekbones. “He blamed Kelly, he-”

He took a second to calm himself, but failed. It came pouring out, his voice nearly shouting, distressed and frustrated. “He blamed  _ her _ ! For something that  _ I _ fucking did! He  _ convinced  _ himself that she was some  _ whore  _ trying to drag me away from him, and she tried to defend me, and they began to fucking  _ hate _ .”

His voice lowered, and quieted, to almost a whisper. “They  _ hated  _ each other. But there wasn’t the...  _ Determination  _ to prove yourself, that I had with 0-8-9. So when they went for the throat, they didn’t stop themselves at the last second.”

He continued on, voice always on the edge of cracking into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing. The only way he could keep any semblance of control was to barely even think about her: only the plot, with none of the details, like the love of his lie was someone he barely knew, who he’d forget about soon...

_ But you won’t. Ever. When you’re alone in the dark, you’ll remember. When you’re trying to line up the shot, you’ll remember. When you’re with friends, safe, and happy, you’ll remember, and then you’ll be sad again, and angry, and frustrated, and scared. You will  _ never _ forget. _

_ I know. _

“Two months ago, due to a joint effort between me and the other team leader, Operation:  _ Hadúr  _ was destroyed from the inside by myself, 0-8-9, Kelly, and an outside force of ONI Section 3 agents.”

“After we killed key leaders and officers of the project, during our attempted escape, Bruce used a System 99 Anti-Matériel Sniper Rifle to shoot at us. Kelly took the round for me in the abdomen, and apart from opening a football-sized hole in her, it hit her spine and paralysed her from the waist down.”

“We had no medical kits, one aircraft with barely any range, and the remnants of the project hunting us. We landed in a forest, in Winter, at minus 20 degrees Celsius, and within a few minutes, it was clear she was going to be-”

He allowed himself a moment, before going on. “I rested her against a tree, and we just sat, snow falling around us, her blood leaking out and staining it. We barely had any time to talk.”

“She died when I-”

One word pierced him. One word, which, while spoken by his mind, he couldn’t be any more sure had come from her. The real her.

_ No. _

“-She died in my arms. She died looking up at falling snow and stars. She couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful scene. White, and- and red, and-”

He shook his head. He was done.


	7. 1.7: Something Angelic

“Did it work? Can you still see her?”

Arizona looked up at Carolina, through watery eyes, and saw another woman stood behind her, as he knew he would. He shook his head, smiling.

Carolina sighed. She had tried; in the end, it just didn’t work. She‘d failed.

_She tried though. That’s more than could be said for a lot of people._

He sat up, and looked right at his imaginary friend, confused.

_Since when are you being nice about her?_

_The same time that you are. I think what you think._

_No, you think what I think you would think. The actual you. The dead one._

The ghost shrugged, and then smiled. Warmly. He didn’t think he had actually seen her smile like that since she was alive.

_Maybe your subconscious just decided that it likes this girl who’s sacrificing her time to help someone she barely knows. Or, more likely, you telling your story actually did help._

He leant back, and smiled incredulously. _You’re still here. Pouring out my heart did fuck-all._

_Maybe. Or maybe all  it did was remind you._

_Of?_

_Who I am. It seemed like your cynicism and depression was wearing off on me. Understandable, seeing as we share a brain- but maybe you just reminded yourself who I am, what I would do, and what I would say. If you remember,_ I _was actually pretty nice._

_Maybe._

_No, definitely. I’m a manifestation of your innermost thoughts; I know what I’m talking about._

He closed his eyes, and let his head fall into his hands.

_So what now? I learn to live with you?_

_I don’t think so. I’ll become more and more like you as you start to forget me; eventually I’ll be pushing you to the edge again. You’d better get closure before that._

_What the fuck does_ that _mean?_

_It means accepting my death. Which, unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to do. Either find out how, or…_

_Or throw myself out of airlock. Right._

She smiled, kindly. Although her mere presence was enough to sadden him, it did make him feel a little better.

“Are you done yet?”

He looked up, and saw Carolina, still sat there. He looked back down, ashamed.

“It’s fine, I could tell you were working some things out. Did you say goodbye yet?”

“No, but I think- I think you might have actually helped. A little bit. A _miniscule_ amount.”

Carolina smiled. “Do you think you can hold it together now?”

He scoffed. “What, indefinitely? Fuck no.”

“For a few days, at least. Until we get a chance to do this again.”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll be alright for a while.”

She smiled, radiant.

He couldn’t help but smile back, hesitantly. For the first time in a long time, he could feel the pull in his cheeks, the tightness in  his eyes, and a small warmth, that told him it was a genuine one- and happy one.

“Thanks, by the way… I realise I haven’t been the most…” He waved his arms around, searching for the right word.

_Un-assholish?_

He smiled, suppressing a laugh. Now, his imagination’s insults were teasing, not scathing. He was thankful for that.

“I just really want to say I appreciate this. If you ever need-” he cut himself off midway through talking.

What was it he had been thinking earlier? That she was using him- for what ends, it didn’t matter, it was just the fact that she was. And then she comes and helps him, out of the kindness of her heart?

_I know I was just acting all cynical and making you paranoid and shit, but really, who puts herself in a position to help a mentally unstable rookie?_

He squinted at her, trying to judge her. He realised very quickly he had no fucking idea what he was doing.

_Shit, I might as well make allies. Maybe we can use each other to the point that we actually do become friends._

_But if she ever turns on you, and you’re forced to act…_

_If that does happen, I’ll assess the situation at that point._

Then he smiled at her, and said, “Just ask.” He convinced himself that he said it out of good heart.

Carolina leant forward, business-like.

_Holy shit, she’s using you already. Subtlety isn’t one of her strong points._

“Actually, there was one thing.”

“Yeah?” he said, with warm, hesitant friendliness.

“So, you have all of this cool shit in here?”

He nodded.

“Can I ‘borrow’ some?”

He laughed. Fuck, he would’ve given that to her anyway. Most of his ‘cool shit’ was just regular half-baked garbage.

_Depends on your point of view._

****

After about twenty minutes, they had everything of some use laid out; on desks, on tables, on overturned boxes, and on the floor. Grenades, equipment, weapons- ranged, melee, and even some that would only fit into the ‘other’ category- and various disassembled parts of weapons, drones, a bike, and even what looked like some set of ONI black-ops gear.

“So… Give me the tour.”

He sighed, knowing how long this would take.

_Not as long as it took to make them. Fuck, we must’ve spent most of our lives in that sweaty workshop._

They started on the guns.

“You’ve already seen the LAER,” he said, holding up the weapon he had used in the combat sim, “But I also have a pistol variant. I tried snipers, but the voltage requires too much of a current tradeoff for long-range use.”

“Maybe you could tell me how it fucking works? And why it sounds like a cannon shot?”

He laughed. “It uses a laser-induced plasma channel to deliver the electricity. The laser heats up the air to the point of stripping the electrons from it- which causes the sonic boom- and then it shocks through that channel. Not simple. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get the current right?” She didn’t respond. “Fucking hard.”

_Well, not unless you’re trying to incapacitate. If you’re going lethal, what’s a few more orders of magnitude? All that would do is turn a clean kill into a smoking heap of-_

“You’re telling me you used a _plasma weapon_ against teammates?”

He shifted around, uneasily. “Yeah… Technically. UNSC regulations say that plasma weapons cannot be used in any combat exercises save for live-fire ones, which is bullshit. It’s all anti-Covenant weaponry bullshit.”

Carolina sighed. “What else?”

“ _Actual_ plasma guns.” He lifted one off of a table. It looked suspiciously similar to the Covenant plasma rifle; it had the two prongs making a U shape, with the plasma firing from between them, a very similar grip, and it even had a Covenant symbol on the underside. It was different, though. It was black, to start, but it was also more stocky and boxy, more angled- in contrast to the heavily streamlined covenant arsenal. This weapon was also longer than the covenant counterpart; it seemed more like an actual rifle. It also had a holographic scope on the top, a short shoulder stock, and a magazine slot inside the U.

“I’m not going to lie; this _is_ heavily recreated from a covenant plasma rifle. I tweaked it everywhere I could- notice the sweet black colouring- so it is _much_ better. It has about double the power, fires more accurately, and has a really fucking cool feature.”

_It’s dumb. You spent a week on that, and it barely works anyway._

He held the gun up for her, and made her look down the sights. “Slide your thumb across the grip. Do you see the trajectory?”

She nodded. In the glass of the sight, she could see a thin line, tracing the path of any shot that might be fired. When she slid her thumb, the line curved. With a little playing around with it, she found she could angle it around corners and over tables.

“The thing about plasma is, it’s incredibly electromagnetic. Which means with a small magnet influencing how the burst come out, you can fucking bend the plasma.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “It does fuck with the accuracy though. Like, a lot. If you go full auto, thousand-degree pinpoints of air will go everywhere. Which, you know, can be a good thing.”

She nodded. “Just not when I’m around people I don’t want cooked. Got it.”

_Fuck, do you remember the time we tried testing that? You clenched the trigger, and the workshop got fucking obliterated. Also, the third degree burns weren’t fun._

Arizona looked down, clenching his face, trying to not remember. When he looked back up, Carolina was looking at him, expectantly.

“Good? You can have it, if you want. I think I’m going to focus on non-lethal stuff from here on. The UNSC seems to have a surplus of deadly weapons, but nothing that can just maim.”

She smiled, in thanks.

_Oh, sure, just fucking give it away._

_Shut the fuck up, I have the blueprints. I can make another with a 3-D printer and a block of titanium-C._

_No you don’t. You left the fucking data crystal in your DMR, which is now buried at the bottom of an abandoned Hadúr complex._

_I meant mental blueprints._

_No you didn’t. Also, it’s more of a sentimental thing._

He sighed. He was glad he was getting snarky dead girlfriend instead of psychotic dead girlfriend, but _fuck_ , it was still an ordeal.

Carolina scanned the random assortment of metal and plastic. “Okay, what about melee?”

“Er… Fuck, not much. I have the electric stick, and the arc sword, but-”

“Arc sword?” She seemed giddy with anticipation.

He smiled to himself. Arc. She was probably envisioning some sort of blade made of pure light.

_Eh, not too far off. Technically, the actual blade is only there for show. And for the more stubborn bits of organic matter._

He picked up a fairly-ordinary looking sword. Molded grip to fit his hand, rectangular cross-guard, but the blade was fairly cool. It was thin, ever so slightly curved, and had a simplistic look to it- except for the vent-like sections on the sword’s blunt edge. The whole forward-facing side was bladed, and at the top, it ended in a narrow point.

“This is the arc sword.” He spun it around for effect. “It cuts things.”

“What the fuck is the arc for then?”

He smiled. Instead of talking, he found a scrapped project, and held it up. Slowly, he pressed the blade against it, and put on just a little bit of pressure.

“Is… Is something supposed to be happening?”

Nothing was happening.

_Remember why it took more than a month?_

_Fuck. Power._

_Yeah, and the only time we could get it to work was when we had a hard line to the fucking nuclear reactor. Do you have a nuclear reactor on you?_

_Oh, yeah, I’ll just take the one I keep in my pocket. Whoops, I left in my… Armour._

_MJOLNIR Mk6. Which takes its power solution from the Mk4, which was the first suit of armour to have it own dedicated fission battery._

His eyes widened, comically. “Fuck!”

She squinted at him, not sure if he was talking to her.

He ran to the other side of the room, shouting how he’d only be a minute. In a minute, he was back, stumbling around with one leg in his MJOLNIR. The other leg of armour had the foot in, but it was opened, and was trying to close on top of the fleshy extremity that was in the way.

“That’s not going to crush you, is it?”

“What, the suit? _Fuck_ no, it only closes if it’s clear of obstructions,” he said, flailing his arm, as armour closed over and locked on top of it.

His leg snapped into position, and the armour covered it, sliding over itself to properly cover it. In a few seconds, it was like it had been built around him. His arm followed suit, and then his helmet: from being folded into the back of the neck, it slid over and around his head, with plates moving into place before locking down. Finally, the visor came down, and with a hiss of air, the suit became airtight.

“What… What the fuck…”

He grinned, and then realised she couldn’t see his face. “I made it able to put on itself. Probably my proudest achievement.”

_What, it wasn’t beating 0-8-9 in the obstacle run? Or when you held your own in a three-on-one while me and Bruce ran objective? Or when you took Sophie’s own axe, and implanted it in-_

Kelly stopped herself, this time.

_Sorry. Uncalled for._

_What?_

_Just accept the apology, asshole._

He forgot what he was doing. It took Carolina swishing the sword in front of him to remind him.

“Right, right. So, I should have a static-to-electric around here…” He picked up a small battery pack, took the sword, and shoved the battery inside the grip. It slotted in perfectly.

“So, this sword is really just a collection of electromagnets mushed in with a series of extremely high-current electrodes, separated by insulation. The electricity arcs between electrodes, and the magnets push it outward, onto the blade.”

_Sure, when you say it like, it sounds fucking simple. Then, before you know it, you’re factoring in how the chemical consistency of the air is affected by quantum leaps._

“I should probably say it only works in-atmosphere. Otherwise, nothing for the electricity to jump through, and turn into plasma.”

He thumbed the top of the of the grip, and for a second, the bladed edge of the sword light up bright blue. He grinned again.

He tried the sword-to-piece of scrap metal again. This time, he held his thumb on the grip, making the blade glow with electric current. It cut through without even noticing the object..

“So, you have to cut through people super-slow?”

In response, he tossed half of the metal scrap up, and when it came back down, he sliced it in half. The edges of the halves glowed bright orange where they had been severed, dripping white-hot metal onto the floor. “No, you can swing it normally.”

She openly grinned. “Fuck, that’s cool.”

_Don’t fucking give it to her._

For a few awkward seconds, nothing happened.

“Are you going to-”

“Fuck no! I _love_ this sword!”

She scowled. “You already have a staff. Don’t be fucking greedy.”

Realising she couldn’t see any of the disgust on his face, he took of his helmet, laying it on a nearby desk. Then he repeated the look of disgust.

_Wait, didn’t you make a shitty arc dagger?_

“I did make a sh- another arc dagger. You can have _that_ one.”

She narrowed her eyes. “ _You_ can have the dagger.”

Adamant, he said, “No, you can have the dagger.”

“I’m fairly certain that, of the two of us, in relation to the dagger, the can having of it goes to you.”

_Trade. Make her forgive the debt._

_What debt?_

_The debt you have because she helped you, fool._

_I don’t owe her for that! Oh, right. But she thinks I do._

_Yeah, so give her it, and make it clear it makes you even._

“Fine, you can have it. But that fulfills for the ‘if you need anything just ask’ agreement.”

She pondered. Was a _bitching_ sword worth it? “Fine. I won’t take any more shit. But I absolutely still want to see it all.”

He sighed. He had won; but at what cost?

“I mean, if there’s something I really do need, I’ll probably just steal it, but you’ll have the moral high ground.”

_What a consolation._

He grimaced to himself, making a mental note to put explosive locks on all the boxes.

He said, “Alright, so we’ve negotiated _that_. Now tell me what the fuck is this shit with the invisible people?”

She laughed. “Armour abilities. Tex’s is active camouflage. Mine is chameleon plating- and also super speed. It’s like our ‘specials’.”

He pondered. “So… What’s stopping you from getting as many as you want?”

“Limited power supply.”

“What if the thing doesn’t require power? Or it requires basically none?”

She shrugged. “Then it’s probably shit.”

He lit up. A half-smile spread on his face, a devilish twinkle appeared in his eye, and he was radiating arrogance. “Nano-fibre gloves would tend to disagree with you.”

She tilted her head instead of responding.

He spent a moment searching through the junk, before holding up a fairly normal-looking glove. Black, orange highlights, hexagonal pattern, looked kind of like the fingerless combat gloves given to ODSTs. But with fingers.

“Basically, the entire surface is made of tiny little nanomachines that grab onto whatever the fuck you want. Wire it up to a neural interface, and you can tell them to grab or let go.”

She raised a single eyebrow. “Sticky hands?”

He took of his MJOLNIR glove, slipped on the nano-glove, and grabbed a nearby gun. He viciously swung it around, while keeping his hand open, but the gun didn’t fly off; it stayed as if it was an extension of Arizona’s arm.

“Yes. Useful for climbing, EVA movement, hanging. I bet I could even use in hand-to-hand combat if I get creative about it. Really, all of this shit is just finding ways to be creative.”

She smiled. “For example?”

_Here we fucking go._

“Somewhere in here is a gauss rifle- about the same power as the one you can find on warthogs. Obviously, you can use it for anti-materiel work, even anti-vehicular work: or, get a little inventive, and you can swap out the metal slug for a grappling hook, get a fuck-ton of rope, and make a line between two skyscrapers a kilometre apart.”

_And that line can cut a pelican in two._

“In here’s a small spherical thing, kind of like a grenade, except all it does it emit a magnetic field. that can be used to fry electronics, it can fuck with delicate machinery, in zero-G you can throw it at someone, and it’ll home in on them, and smack them whenever they try and throw it away.”

_And for added fun, you can shoot it out of the gauss rifle, meaning when it hits, it’ll rip a hole in the target!_

“The plasma rifle I showed you earlier- it has another setting. Tone down the magnets, and you’ll get a constant stream of plasma spewing out of the front of it. You can use it to cut open doors and shit, use it to toast marshmallows, or even slice bitches in half in the coolest way possible. Seriously. Fucking plasma sword.”

 _Or, stick it through a wall, and slowly heat up the room until everyone inside burns to death. As you were disturbingly fond of doing on_ that _mission._

He spread his arms wide, gleeful. “Everything has so fucking many uses. All you have to do is think.”

_Fucking inspirational. Although it should really be, ‘everything has so fucking many ways to kill people’. Often messily._

Carolina looked down, and shook her head. She started a very slow, drawn-out applause.

Arizona frowned. “Okay, just- just help me pick out some of this shit for the mission. What are we doing, exactly?”

She pulled a small tac-pad out of her suit, and scrolled through the mission brief. “UNSC ships found this rebel destroyer we’ve been tailing… _Fuck_ , they _decimated_ it. Took out their engines and their slipspace drive, but it has a high-priority target onboard, so UNSC bugged out, and left it dead in space for us.”

“We come in, EVA through the debris field, enter the ship, take out whoever's in charge, grab the target, and blow it the fuck up. Simple.”

Arizona frowned, thinking. “So… Zero-G for starters, then close-quarters, right?”

_Remind you of anything? Just like the Versailles. Except that ship didn’t have any defences on it. And instead of rebels, it was Earth Government._

_Not my fault._

_I know. You know. Everyone knows. The reason we fail is to learn from our mistakes._

_Your point?_

_Make sure that these ‘rebels’ really_ are _rebels._


	8. 2.1: Whirlwind

It was disconcerting, watching fragments of metal and plastic fly by at nearly a hundred metres per second. With his head angled upwards, looking ahead as he dove through space, Arizona could see just how big the debris field was; it stretched for nearly a full ten kilometres, and was so dense that the insurrectionist destroyer, _Staff of Charon_ , only 500 metres long and now significantly shorter, was only intermittently visible.

From what he could see, though, the ship had been decimated. It looked as though the entire rear of the ship had been ripped off: there wasn’t a single engine remaining on it. The ship hung dead in space, floating in the void, where even a small squadron of spartan knock-offs wearing thruster packs could catch up to it.

Which was exactly what the Freelancers were doing. Nine of them- all except for Agent Texas, curiously- were coasting to the edge of the debris field, where they would activate packs and EVA the rest of the distance; apparently, they’d done this before.

The only EVA experience that Arizona had didn’t end particularly well, and he wasn’t too confident he could pull this off. His thruster pack was stuffed with enough propellant to fire off for ten continuous minutes, and it was smart enough to self-correct the course, disengage from a tumble, and even shut itself off if it was damaged. So, he should have felt pretty good.

He told himself to calm the fuck down. He did- mentally- but his heart was still thumping in his chest, his eyes were still darting quickly at every sudden movement, and his gut instinct was going insane. It didn’t feel _right_.

Shaking off the feelings, he turned his head towards his team; it was a strange feeling, commanding his head to turn, but not actually feeling the movement. Any slight twist of a limb in zero-G could send him into a spin, and require his thruster pack to autocorrect it- not an option if he was trying to stay of of the enemy’s thermals. Instead of his head moving to the side, his neural uplink hijacked the signals from his nervous system, and sent them to his helmet, turning the projected image on his visor to the right instead.

As the system fucked with his spacial awareness, he nearly vomited.

Holding it in, he focused. The debris field was about a kilometre away now, trailing out from behind the destroyer like heavy smoke, billowing out.

In outer space, with concept of distance or of movement without something to compare to, travelling at over 300 kilometres per hour seemed strangely serene. If he turned his visor to show the galaxy behind him, it was impossible to gauge his speed, impossible to know if he was stationary or near the speed of light. It only added to the mystique when he realised he actually had no idea how fast he was moving- just how fast he was relative to the destroyer.

Carolina ruined it for him. “Listen up. We reach high debris concentration in twenty seconds, which means thruster packs should already be powered up. I’d advise we _not_ use them until necessary, and even then- small course correction to avoid collisions. We don't know _what_ the rebels have waiting for us, but it can’t stop us if it can’t see us. In short: pretend to be wreckage.”

“Since nine pieces of wreckage all flying in the same direction is a little suspicious, we’re breaking into doubles, as follows: North-South, Wash-Maine, Wyoming-Florida, Arizona-York. I’m going solo. Keep you eyes trained, because motion sensors are essentially useless here.”

Arizona saw York open up private comms with him, then heard, “Hey, rookie, how’s it going? You ready to dodge a sea of debris?”

“Don’t fucking call me rookie.”

_Shit. This harsh already?_

Arizona squinted, looking around, not seeing the hallucinated speaker.

_What, you don't need a body now?_

_I never did. But if you’d prefer…_

He was certain he just saw Kelly’s limp corpse shoot past him.

“Okay. Sorry, um, Arizona. “

He sighed, moving his hand to rub his forehead. Luckily, his neural uplink caught the motion, and shut down the signal before it sent him spinning. He said, “No, don’t-”

He never managed to finish, with impact force slamming into him from below.

Briefly, he had seen a small craft, moving too quickly to identify, whip beneath him. It flew straight through the centre of the loose Freelancer formation, and in its wake, several small objects had thrusted to slow down, then exploded. The blast had been weak, with no atmosphere to weaponise, but the bombs must have been loaded with a small expansive gas to damage them.

The explosives still managed to throw the Freelancers off-course, and Arizona’s vision was reduced to a spinning blur. A moment later, a sudden jolt of force from his back corrected him, and sent him facing the direction of movement. Veering slightly to the side, Arizona boosted sideways and down to reach the cover of a broken-off armour plate, and at least a kilometre of sparse debris.

“York! You still with me?”

York wheezed in response, “Yeah, right behind you.”

Arizona nodded to himself, deactivated the locks on his armour, and then looked straight down. He could see York drifting behind, and a bright orange light in the distance, arcing around like it was getting closer-

He reached to his back, felt the grip and stock expand out to join his hand, and pulled out the weapon.

It was long- 1.5 metres- and heavy enough that it needed either a fixed emplacement or a suit of MJOLNIR to use. The most striking feature was the barrel, elongated but thick, rectangular and made up of many small plates, with a dull blue cylinder underneath.

Through his visor’s smart-link, he looked down the sight, directed it to focus in on the threat, and activated the target lock protocols. He saw the craft- small, with wings bristling with weapons- activate retrograde engines and slow down, homing in for the kill. Layered over that, he saw a trajectory path, and a target just ahead of the craft, compensating for the hostile velocity.

Not that he had to worry about that with this gun. As long as he didn’t shoot the very back of the craft, there wasn’t much time between firing and hitting when the projectile shot at 3000 kilometres per second. Arizona fired, and 0.3 seconds later, the craft exploded into a fireball.

Strange that it looked like the gun fired after the target was hit. As a blinding blue bolt of light burst from the barrel, and recoil nearly flipped Arizona over himself, the metal plates on the gun’s front opened up and showed the bright light beneath. Normally, that would only happen after three consecutive shots, but in vacuum there was no air of heat dissipation; the weapon could only cool through infrared, which meant Arizona had to wait between shots, or risk having his gun explode in his face.

It also meant that Arizona was now the brightest, most noticeable target on any thermal within a kilometre.

As he zoomed out and searched for more targets, Arizona saw York recoil. “Holy shit! What the hell is that thing?”

“Doesn’t matter, just spot for me. Keep an eye on our twelve.”

“Roger, guy with laser cannon.”

Arizona smiled. Of course this wasn’t laser; if it was, the projectile would have been invisible, since there was no atmosphere to-

“Targets!”

Arizona flipped his gun to point above him, aiming back towards his trajectory, and quickly fired another round. Ahead, a small craft had its wing blow off, and it quickly spiralled away.

The other two opened fire, raining down machinegun fire. The Freelancers divided, boosting from the line of fire, but the attack craft’s aim followed and compensated.

“Keep changing course, don’t let them lead you!”

Arizona tried to aim again, but had was moving too fast, changing course too quickly- he needed something stable. Seeing a chance, he thrusted towards a floating hunk of metal, landed on the side opposite the attackers, and stuck to it with nano-boots.

He saw the rounds follow him, then strike the debris he was on, on the other side. Immediately, the metal burst into orange explosions, and the debris chunk smacked him the face, sending him soaring away and tumbling.

 _Fucking explosive rounds_.

Only seeing a spinning blur of black and gray, mixed in with a couple bright flashes of orange, Arizona waited for his pack to re-adjust him. Jarringly quickly, he returned to an acceptably slow spin. Then, he noticed the giant fucking structure dead ahead, and quickly perpendicularly thrusted to avoid it. After that, he dodged two more obstructions, before he saw a relatively clear path, and committed to it.

That was a mistake. No sooner had he started going down the clear route than an enemy fighter appeared, right in front of him, blocking his path. He could get a better view of it now; they were drones, similar to the F99 UCAV drone, but this version was _bristling_ with weapons. Twin gatling cannons adorned the wings; as did four HE missiles, and there was even what looked like a fucking gauss cannon sticking out of the nose.

He had to decide what to do instantly. The paths to the side were too cluttered to risk going in between debris; the craft was already turning its impressive arsenal to face him, so he couldn't go back on himself… That left one path for him.

He boosted towards the drone, gaining speed, while trying to judge exactly where he should try and get around it; he decided for the underside of the wing, right by the missiles.

He zoomed past it just as it fired. The missile popped off of its holster, decoupled by a small explosive, and in the second between that and it firing the rocket in its rear, Arizona smacked into it.

Just in time, he flung himself around, so that instead of taking off his head, it merely obliterated his thruster pack. The force spun him around, so that he got a beautiful view of the missile boosting into the debris, exploding magnificently, and then causing the rest of the drone to go up in huge orange fireball. As he looked, amazed, he realised the fireball was spinning incredibly fast- his thruster had burst, spewed out all of the propellant, then automatically shut down. Now, it was fucking useless.

Tumbling at irreparable speeds, Arizona pretty much accepted his fate. He was spinning so fast that the stars were streaks across the night sky, and just opening his eyes hurt his brain.

Panicking, he resigned himself to a very messy, splattery death.

_Yeah. Unfortunately, this is the last time we’ll speak. Considering you’ll be a red smudge in a few seconds._

_At least I’ll get relief from your fucking snarks._

_Oh, come on. You love them really. You’ll be missing them when you’re dead._

_Firstly, dead, so can’t miss anything. Secondly, I might survive this. Maybe I’ll smack into something, get my legs torn off, lose so much blood I get brain damage, and then live out my life in a hospital ward._

_Nah, you’re fucking dead._

_There’s a chance-_

_DEAD._

_Fuck you! I die when I put a fucking bullet in my ear canal, no sooner!_

Just to spite a segment of himself, he resigned himself to live. He was spinning uncontrollably, with no thruster pack, and likely to smack into a piece of titanium at any moment. He did have MJOLNIR, sticky gloves, one arc dagger, one electric staff, one DMR, and one…

Gauss rifle. A big mean motherfucker that shot half-kilogram slugs at about a kilometre a second, and had ammo for ten metal slugs, three grapples, one HE round, and one that was basically a mach 3 railway spike. Struck with a sudden, crazy idea, he thought, _fuck it, it’s crazy idea or red cloud of human_.

He held the gun out at arm’s length, pointing it perpendicular to him and opposite the direction of his spin, and fired. After the initial jolt of recoil, the rate of spin slowed, and after three more shots, he was down to an acceptable speed. He could actually make out the debris around him now; miraculously, he had managed to spin out in the most open area possible. There wasn’t a hazardous piece of metal for a hundred metres in any direction.

Arizona immediately found the downside of that when another fighter drone emerged through the scrap. This one wasted no time positioning itself; it fired a dozen heat-seekers from a rocket pod, which arced out before homing in to his position. While strangely mesmerising, it was one of the most terrifying sights he’d ever witnessed.

Not wasting any time on thinking his actions through, he loaded the first slug he could find for the gauss rifle, and fired at the drone, hoping to destroy the lock-on control centre. The round turned out to be a grappling hook.

From a small winch in the barrel of the weapon, a millimetre-thick strand of carbon nanotube shot out, following the heavy, spiked, and magnetically sticky grapple. It hit the drone directly in the forward canopy, and Arizona was yanked towards the monstrosity of weaponry; the rockets following him quickly adjusted their course, and started boosting towards him from his behind.

Drone in front, rockets behind, and already the starts of a genius, idiotic idea formed in his head, Arizona flew towards the hard hull while missiles gained behind him, accelerating rapidly. He guessed, at a constant rate, that he’d have maybe… Two and a half seconds between him landing on the hull and the rockets reaching him. He disentangled himself from the grappling line, and then he prepared himself; with knees brought up, hands laid flat, and whole body tensed.

He hit the drone. He landed on it with his palms first, and with arms contracting to absorb the impact, before his tucked-in legs made contact. As soon as they did, he launched himself off of the drone, up and out, and for a brief moment, he simply floated away from it.

Then, the force of a bright orange flash slammed into him, as the rockets collided with their own delivery system. Undoubtedly, a few, if not most of the rockets had corrected their path and avoided hitting the drone: but all it took was one of the twelve rockets to not change course quick enough, and hit the craft, to destroy it and catch all of the other rockets in the explosion.

Arizona had barely had enough time to recover from the sheer terror of the maneuver, before a streak of bright blue appeared just behind him, about a hundred metres back. It was too small to be one of the drones, so he guessed that it was a Freelancer. He frantically waved, and then regretted it when it sent him into a spinning motion.

_Idiot. that was the first thing we were taught in EVA training._

She wasn't even trying to make sense anymore. There she was, floating beside him; at least she was wearing EVA armour.

_Hey, I’ll- or more like you’ll- make me as rational as possible, while also making me appear here. Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch._

A welcome distraction, he heard through his in-helmet radio; “Arizona? That you, near the fucked-up drone?”

It was York. Arizona breathed in relief. “Yeah, I lost my pack, need pickup”

“Oh, sure, but first I kind of have to-”

Arizona watched him veer sharply left as a torrent of explosive machinegun fire rained across nearby wreckage, narrowly missing him.

He shouted into the comm, “York; get the fuck over here! I can cover you!”

“Yeah? You have that laser still?”

“Gauss rifle, with HE rounds.” technically, it was only the one HE round, but that didn’t matter right now.

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Swimming around himself in fluid motions, Arizona positioned himself until he was fairly stable. He loaded the high-explosive round into the rifle, aimed down it using the link from the scope to his visor, and waited.

_Come on now, this is a simple shot._

He saw the streak of brown flying towards him, and not soon after, saw the drone. He aimed at it.

_Now lead the target… Be careful to take into account change in velocity._

He followed the drone with the reticule, found it has a static speed, and very slightly moved his gun so that it was pointed at the very front of it.

_And now gently squeeze, so that it doesn’t throw the accuracy._

He did. In addition, he also held his breath, waited for the moment between heartbeats, and only then fired.

Almost as soon as he had shot, the drone exploded into two pieces; one of the two engines had been ripped off of the ship, and the other, now unbalanced, sent it into a vicious spin. It spun out, and crashed into a very solid segment of destroyer armour.

Then, a very heavy thing smashed into him; it grabbed him by the upper back, and dragged him away from the scene, towards the immobilized destroyer. Saying a word of thanks, which was reciprocated by a teasing remark, Arizona held the rifle aimed behind them, in case more drones came.

But mainly, because otherwise he would be forced to look at the third person, floating alongside them, smiling their brutally warm smile. The feeling that something wasn’t right was back.

_Why don’t you enjoy having me around? You’re the one asking for it._

_I do_ not _want this. The stupid animalistic side of my subconsciousness wants this._

_Still; what makes my presence so bad?_

_Apart from the fact that I might be going insane? You’re an imposter. You defile her memory._

_You keep forgetting that I’m actually you._


	9. 2.2: The Edge

“Looks like all the fun shit’s going down the main hangar. ‘Lina, Maine, Wash, and Wyoming are all there- looks like the twins are enroute. We’ll be there in T-minus twenty.”

Arizona nodded, even though York couldn’t see it. The _Staff of Charon_ was in their view, plainly visible, and it was devastated. The entire aft section was just gone; the rest of it, though, was also heavily damaged, looking like it had been pummeled by low-yield explosives. Just enough to destroy ship-mounted weapons, but not enough to breach the hull and risk whatever the fuck the target was.

Suddenly, an explosion lit up the outside of the ship. From the size, it was probably a shoulder-launched rocket.

The explosion wasn't powerful, but out here, it illuminated the ship. Epsilon Eridani, the closest star, was over 3 billion kilometres out- it provided barely any light, and even that failed to reach the opposite side of the Destroyer. With no moon to reflect light backwards, half of the it was eerily blackened, and the other was akin to a night on Earth with a new moon. Any source of light stuck out, a candle in the dark.

Arizona could clearly see the around thirty soldiers, with bright helmet flashlights searching for their target, steadily advancing on the ship’s dark side.

“Mind dropping me off at that piece of fun shit?”

While he didn’t get a verbal response, he was sure that York was grinning. He started spinning them both around, gaining momentum, before he suddenly let go of Arizona, and he was flung towards the fighting.

If he wasn’t in the middle of a combat scenario, trying to figure out how to land while still rotating, Arizona would have wondered how the hell York had managed to pull that off.

He sped towards the blackened hull of the Destroyer. About thirty black-armoured combatants were steadily advancing on a position: a crack in the hull that ran for more than fifty metres. In preparation for his landing, he switched to his DMR, held it in his left, and readied himself to land on crouched legs and his other hand.

As soon as he touched down on the Destroyer, with magnetic boots holding him down, he was being aimed at. Quickly, he raised his DMR, and shot three wild bullets as he ran for cover.

He reached a small tear in the metal, and crouched behind it, as suppressing fire kept his head down; he moved down the recession in the hull, careful to stay quiet and not visible, and popped out of cover ten metres over from where he had entered.

Fluidly, his reticule fell on the closest assailant- a steel black suit full body of armour that looked like a stripped down, shitty mark VI- and fired twice into their chest. They fell backward, but their boots stayed magnetically locked to the floor, so that their body flailed around with unmoving feet.

Quickly, he turned slightly right to see three more starting to aim, and quickly moved his gun to each of them. One bullet went into each one’s torso, but only two went down. The other staggered back, but before Arizona could finish him, the rest of the troopers started firing on his new position, forcing him back into cover.

_Well, this is great. You came to save whoever the fuck from a mob of hostiles keeping them in cover, and now guess where you are!_

Arizona gritted his teeth.

She was in the hole with him, leaning against the burned and melted metal. She had her arms crossed, and her head tilted slightly to the side, in that way that he had always loved.

_Yeah, why do you think I’m doing it? Now come on, dig yourself out of this hole. Literally. Well, no, the hole is literal, but I wouldn’t recommend digging out of it._

He closed his eyes, inhaling sharply, and thought.

They were probably wise to the tactic of moving slightly to the side by now, so he really had no option but to continue down the alcove. It ran for another twenty metres, then it was interrupted by a large crater in the armour- one that was about twenty metres wide, was quite deep, and had a very large lip around the edge, covering it from outside attacks. Very convenient.

To get the idiots to come into the crater of death, Arizona fired blindly over the wall a couple times, to get their attention. He felt the soft vibrations of approaching feet, and fired once more. Quickly, they approached his hiding spot.

He shoved himself as far into a narrow crack as he could, and hid as soldiers came down into the recession. They passed him by only a couple of metres, but to them, the black, irregular MJOLNIR was indistinguishable from the black, irregular metal.

A soldier’s helmet light passed over Arizona, bathing him in light, and subjecting him to a fleeting moment of fear, anticipation, just a little bit of excitement…

The trooper passed; the hard, angled shapes of Arizona’s armour were indistinguishable from the broken, shattered ship armour. Slowly, the squad passed into the crater, continuing their search.

_What now? You take on six guys, by yourself, with just an armour-piercing dagger?_

_Yeah, actually. That’s exactly my plan._

_It’s fucking dumb._

Arizona unsheathed a short metal blade with a rubber grip, fingered a little button on the underside, and grinned without pleasure as a short-lived flash of plasma illuminated his crack.

The plasma couldn’t arc through air in a vacuum, which meant it would try to travel through the blade- incredibly inefficient, and dangerous, if it overheated. But, used sparingly, and activated when the blade was about to plunge into something, and the electricity could use the target’s body as a conduit. Vaporise that, instead.

Essentially, vacuum turned his plasma dagger into a heat-assisted one.

Quickly, he slipped out, and started running to the crater. The rear guard spotted him immediately, but was unable to warn his comrades of the impending danger, due to the thrown dagger that had implanted in his skull. Arizona grabbed the handle, yanked it out of the freshly dead corpse, and poked his head over the crater’s lip.

_Your first kill of your new life! How did it feel? Like a new beginning? Or are you so fucking numb that it’s ‘just another target’ now and-_

_It felt like one out six._

He dived into the crater.

Disorientation was, he found, always the best close-quarters tactic. And it was probably extremely disorientating when a hulking suit of power armour vaulted into the middle of a five-man group, and started slashing away.

The first died immediately; when Arizona landed, he did with one foot on their head, and the blade right into their torso. The electricity quickly burnt through and melted the hardened armour plates, while the actual blade cut through the flesh with ease. As soon as that one was dead, he rolled, and stood up between two more.

In one fluid motion, he spun 360 degrees, and cut both of their throats. By then, one had taken aim, so he rushed that soldier, crouched and span under the shots, and cut into his leg at the knee. As it turned out, heat was also extremely effective at cutting bone. Before he could even scream, the dagger was out and back in, this time in their neck.

The final combatant actually did have their gun raised, and aimed, and was about to fire; unfortunately, however, the dagger was suddenly in their arm, and they lost control of the weapon. Before they could even try and rip the knife out, half a ton of power armour was on top of them, and a gloved hand quickly and effectively slammed their head into the floor.

Arizona stood still, perplexed by the devastation. Bodies floated slowly upwards, still bleeding profusely, spraying droplets of red into space. Zero-gravity was a special kind of beautiful.

He waited for the response.

_Really, nothing? You aren’t going to comment on that?_

_Nothing to comment on. We both know how fucked up that was. We both know it felt good._

His mouth twitched slightly, as if it wasn’t able to decide whether to grin or frown.

So, he had killed, now, about eight of thirty, which would make it a lot easier on whoever was holed up, but not so much so that they could realistically win. Which meant he had to kill… Maybe ten more. Really, he should kill all of them, just to be sure; he didn’t even know who he was trusting to hold them off, so how could he put trust in their combat ability?

Slowly, Arizona raised his head up over the lip of the crater. Nothing. None of twenty-two remaining troopers were still advancing on him. He frowned, and turned around, and then sighed. They were all past him.

Closer to the edge of the recession they were firing on, and still at around thirty combatants, the troop was well ahead of him. But they didn’t even have a rear guard: idiots. While it was probable that they did have a rear guard, and they were just preoccupied with fatal stab wounds, a troop that size should always have at least three rear guards.

Otherwise, exactly what was _going_ to happen could happen. And what was going to happen, was Arizona was going to systematically pick off their rearmost troopers, one-by-one, until there was only one left. Then he’d kill that one, too.

He smiled to himself. Half out of the satisfaction that this would bring to his ego- killing thirty enemies with nothing but a DMR and a knife- and half out of anticipation for the look on that last one’s face. Arizona would be sure to rip his helmet off before shoving a knife into his eye.

Three were holding up the left rear, all looking forward like filthy amateurs, and in three consecutive shots each died. In the silence of vacuum no sound alerted the rest of the troops to their deaths, and the only vibrations that the rest felt were distorted and hidden amongst the vibrations of the continuous suppressing fire.

With those three gone, Arizona flanked around to the right of the group. It was slow, but it was always better to be sure when dealing with an entire platoon. Slowly, he approached two more, and grabbed the closest. Dragging him back, Arizona stuck the dagger in his chest, watching it melt open and then penetrate the soft muscle, until it burst the heart open. The second received only a quick dagger strike to the back of the neck, and a hard backwards pull to get their body away from the scene.

Frowning, Arizona realised that this couldn’t kill all of them; at most, in the little time he had left, he could cut a curved line through their formation and kill nearly half. However, it was very risky. Really, to even think about pulling it off, he’d need another target to distract them for him, and he’d need them to be being taken out at the same time by another-

Before he had even finished his thought, he knew exactly what was going to happen. He had seen a black figure leap over the short recession, start running towards the group, and then disappear. While it would have been in Tex’s best interest to just fuck off elsewhere, he knew that she’d definitely start slaughtering.

Fuck that. This was _his_ slaughterfest.

Running, Arizona picked a line to follow through the formation; starting at the rear-right, curving towards the top-middle, and back around to the rear-left, to maximise targets neutralised. To start off, he brought out the DMR, and picked seven troops that he knew would pose a threat during the melee strike. He fired nine bullets, and they all went down.

Quickly, he stowed the weapon, and brought out the dagger. Really, the best thing about it wasn’t that it was armour-piercing, or bone-piercing, or even fucking cool. It didn’t get stuck. Which, with fourteen targets, was bound to happen with a standard knife.

As soldiers started to turn and aim at this new attacker, Arizona jumped right in, rolled, and began. At the same time, Agent Texas began her attack.

Arizona came out of the roll in a spin, and sliced someone’s throat open. The next strike went into a stomach, which Arizona wasn’t really happy with, so then it went into a visor. Blood sprayed _everywhere_. The next three were all in a bunch, which meant that as Arizona went in, they had no chance of covering each other. He ducked, while slicing downward, jumped up, while slicing upward, and then stuck it in the last one, using their magnetically-locked boots to swing around with the corpse, and get back onto the hull.

Then, he was done. He looked for targets, but there were none. Every single fucking soldier had run like a pussy bitch over to the hangar, where he hoped that Cal and her team would-

_Fuck._

He said aloud, “They weren’t trying to get to you. They were trying to get past you.”

“Well. Fucking. Done.”

For a second, he thought it was his dead girlfriend. Then, he looked, and saw the menacing Agent Texas, with a hand on her hip, and scathing inflections in her voice.

Her voice was incredible, though; it wasn't anything like what should suit a murderous psychotic such as herself. He had been expecting a gruff, angry, caveman-ish voice- not the hometown-girl one that he was hearing. He wondered if that was why she didn’t talk much.

“Now hurry the fuck up so we can-” she stopped, abruptly, focused on something behind Arizona, in the direction of the hangar where all of the action was taking place.

“ _-Fuck_ _me_.”

Arizona laughed aloud, turned, and inhaled sharply. Four ultra-luminous spotlights beamed down on them, each attached to the same vehicle, but also about fifty metres apart. It was hard to tell the shape of the craft- it was painted to match the blackness of space exactly- but from the way the stars disappeared behind it, Arizona was clear on one thing. It was fucking huge.

Tex whispered to him, “Longsword, strike fighter, it’s not shooting because it’s verifying targets.”

“So if we point a gun at it-”

“It’ll launch several dozen rockets, fire twin rotary cannons, and probably a few other things as well.”

“Right. So, any ideas?”

She didn’t talk, so he turned his head slightly to look at her. She was looking back at him, and something about her made him sure that underneath her terrifying orange visor, Texas was grinning.

She disappeared. She had activated her cloak, turned invisible, and then fucked off elsewhere.

Cursing, Arizona turned back to the longsword, which was now definitely sure that he was a target. Knowing he had seconds to act, Arizona did the first thing that came to mind.

_Hell, it worked once, right?_

_What, are you going to try grappling it, you fucking moron?_

He thought about the motion; if he fucked it up, he’d be red mist. One clean swing of the hand backward, one clean grab of the gauss rifle’s handle; meanwhile he’d grab the grapple ammo and attach it to the grapple; then he’d shove both hands together, aim the thing, and finally, he’d fire the hook at the giant ship in front of him.

_Stupid plan._

He did it anyway, reaching around himself with both hands, grabbing the necessary equipment, and managed to aim the weapon, loaded and primed, at the longsword, just as the missiles fired from the rocket pods. Although his mind was elsewhere, he was still able to count thirty-two missiles launched, recognise their HE tips and heat-seeking ability, and see that although they were shot directly at him, they quickly veered off to the side.

Arizona flew upwards when the grappling hook hit, sailing towards the ship, and landed on it with both hands firmly stuck onto the hull. He watched as the craft turned, and spun to face the same crater where he’d ambushed five people. A single rocket flew out of it, and struck the longsword on the left wing.

Very suddenly, Arizona’s view was fucked with. The longsword stayed there, but everything else started spinning wildly, as the ship flew out of control. He watched, still attached by nanotechnology, as the stars and the _Staff of Charon_ started spinning, span faster, and then became nothing but white and grey streaks on the black sky. He watched as, slowly, the streaks lost substance, became spinning points of light again, and then stabilised, as the longword compensated and re-focused on its target.

Not wanting to waste a single second, Arizona pulled out the arc dagger, and began crawling up the side of the longsword, towards the right engine. He used the nano-glove to stay stable, while forcing the dagger into the hull, and using it as leverage to pull himself up the ship.

Slowly, he ascended it, leaving blackened holes where he struck. When he was only ten metres from the engine’s exhaust, he searched for the fuel tank; it was just off to the side of it, protected by what he guessed was a foot of thick titanium-A armour. He crawled on top of it

Slowly, carefully, he cut into it, the softening the metal. Just enough to make a very unstable breaking point in the armour, but not nearly enough to accidentally ignite the fuel. Then, cautiously, he held down the knife’s flat edge.

Slowly, it all started to melt; the outside of the hole became molten titanium, while the steel at the bottom of the hole glowed bright white as it melted. He held it long enough that the bottom started melting rapidly, and then pulled the knife out, sheathing it.

The metal kept melting, as the heat kept spreading further downward; without any air to dissipate heat through convection or conduction, that left only infrared radiation as a method of cooling, which could take hours. The only way for the heat to dissipate was for it to spread, which would melt through the armour, until it hit the highly flammable fuel tanks...

_Fairly clever. Now what? You're on the wrong side of the longsword._

Arizona cursed. He was on the upper side; the Destroyer was below him, which meant that he had no way of jumping off and going anywhere but the void of space. Nervously, he glanced at the molten hole in the titanium; it was now nearly a quarter metre deep, which meant it could reach the bottom at any moment.

To no one except himself, he raised his hand, showing the grappling line still connecting him to the Longsword’s nose.

He jumped, and swung: when he launched up into space, the line snapped taut, and he started swinging back around where the grapple had implanted- the front of the ship.

When he was at the height of the swing, ready to start coming back down, the fuel blew. It made a magnificent explosion of blue and orange, which engulfed the entire right side of the ship, causing it to shudder and start careening to the right.

Arizona felt two very strong forces; the first was from the explosion, which snapped his body upwards, until he was caught on the line and started coming back down. The second was from the change in the Longsword’s trajectory; that caused him to start coming down with the ship, as he was pulled towards the Destroyer's surface. While he was on target, he was also accelerating, so fast that in a few seconds, his speed would make the impact feel like getting hit by a train.

Before he could accelerate any further, Arizona cut the line, and he stabilised. He would still hit the ship pretty fucking fast though- definitely enough to kill an unarmoured human. Maybe even an armoured one. Maybe even one armoured in MJOLNIR.

Arizona smacked into the metal. His arm hit first, and it nearly got ripped off by the impact, but then his legs hit too, and they absorbed some of the force. The rest of him followed, as his torso, head, and groin hit the metal, and he came to a stop.

He breathed in relief. He let himself close his eyes, breathe in, and just be thankful that he wasn’t a red smear on the ship.

He opened his eyes, and scrambled.

Floating upwards, knocked back up by the bounce, Arizona was now too far away to grab onto the hull; he was floating up into space. He flailed, trying to grab hold of anything to get him back- but he was too far gone to save himself-

“Need a hand?”

A black glove enclosed around his leg, and pulled him back down to the ground, where he held on with nano-gloves for a few seconds, overcome with relief.

He looked up at Agent Texas, and, breathing too heavily to talk, gave a thankful thumbs-up.

Caustic, she said, “Any time. Now get back to your squad, you fucking idiot.”


	10. 2.3: So Close

Almost silently, a half-ton mass of armour hit the corrugated steel floor, rolling to spread the momentum and soften the landing. It swept a silenced magnum down both ends of the unlit corridor, and satisfied, began to stealthily move through the darkness.

Agent Arizona knew how to be stealthy. Admittedly, it wasn’t his strongest suit, but he considered himself more than adept; he knew exactly how to place his feet so that they made no sound, he knew exactly how to hide in the right shadow to shield himself from view, and he knew that really, being stealthy just meant killing the guards before they raised the alarm.

So, when he burst around the corner and very noisily took out the three soldiers protecting it, he wasn’t too annoyed. Three silenced bullets easily took them out before they could call for help, and he was pretty sure that no-one else was around to hear, so why worry?

He sighed, frustrated. He could tell that his subconscious was figuring something out- and very soon, it would manifest and tell him all about it.

_How is this bad? I’m extremely helpful._

Arizona looked askance at her green eyes. His dead partner smiled, if a little sadly.

_Anyway, you left one of the fucks alive. He’s probably raising the alarm right about…_

Turning, and already raising his gun to finish off the last guard, Arizona was too late. The nearly dead man was leant on the wall reaching up, and as the 12.7x40mm round pierced through his lung and tore apart his arteries, his hand hit the glowing red alarm switch. Arizona cursed.

He was running before the alarm went off. As his feet landed heavily on the steel floor, with stealth thrown out the window, the dark hallway suddenly lit up in red light: just enough to illuminate the blast door at the opposite end, which was beginning to close.

Running as fast as he could- which was incredibly fast, in power-armoured legs- Arizona leapt through the closing door, rolling on the other side, and coming up into a crouch.

He met about twenty guns. He barely had time to take in the elevated catwalk he was on, and the twenty insurrectionists on the lower floor, and the door he had to get through on the other side of them, before he was running again.

He jumped down to their level, and ran quickly around the edges, making use of any boxes, cargo crates, and support columns he could find. When the door began to raise upward from the ground, blocking of his access, he jumped on top of a crate, leapt to a higher one, and used the rim of the door’s edge to swing through the almost-shut entry. Looking behind, he saw the closed door of solid steel, and the twenty enraged voices behind it.

He also saw his ghost, leant on the adjacent wall, arms folded. She was clad in the MJOLNIR armour that she designed, but never got to actually wear.

_Good to see you can still freerun alright. Although I imagine the armour’s doing most of the work._

Aloud, since no-one else was there, he said, “Yeah, it helps, but really it’s still all about the skill.”

She raised a cocky eyebrow, with a half-smile playing across her lips.

Realising that he probably shouldn’t be engaging her, Arizona turned aside and started walking. He was in a larger hallway; a quick look at a map on his forearm’s tac-pad showed that he was only a couple hundred metres from Carolina’s team. This hallway, a small loading area, and then he’d be in the giant hangar where all the fighting was going down.

_Always towards the violence. Why did you have to choose such an aggressive line of work?_

Then she laughed. Just a few quick chuckles, nothing more; but it was enough.

Furious, Arizona turned to his imagination’s conjuring, and glared.

He would have slammed her- no, it- against the wall, if that would have done anything.

He scowled, enraged at something that he couldn’t describe. Something about hearing her laugh, like she was alive and well, and they were both there together, like they were fucking _meant_ to, like she hadn’t died less than two months ago in a frozen forest…

Something about that was wrong. So wrong.

Remembering to breathe, Arizona continued down the hallway, just to get away from her. She followed, as she always did.

 _I_ am _sorry. It’s not like I intentionally set out to hurt you._

_Hurt me? No, you don’t hurt me. It would be fucking fantastic if you hurt me, because then I could learn to stomach the pain. You just make me sad. That’s it. But it’s enough to drive me insane._

She backed off, for now. Apparently his fucked up subconscious decided that if she were here, she’d fuck off for a minute.

Arizona looked behind him. She had vanished; he was alone again for a little while. He sighed, partly in relief, partly in exasperation.

He managed to not admit that a tiny part of him felt a little lonely when she was gone.

****

Trying to focus, Arizona slid into the loading bay, painfully aware of the around ten real people in the room, and the one non-real person beside him. He carefully ran to cover behind a large cargo crate, and allowed himself a moment to breathe.

_Come on. Ten people, you’ve got the drop, plenty of cover- easy._

He poked his head around cover, careful to stay hidden. There was a route past them all; around the edge, sticking to the shadows, while using as many crates for cover as possible. Simple.

He crouched down, and started moving past the guards. Staying next to the wall, and using the darkness to stay out of sight, he quickly covered the easy half. The next took him right by the majority of the enemies, and would be much harder.

It didn’t help that _she_ was right next to him.

She was just crouched beside him, exactly like she would if she was really there. Arizona gritted his teeth.

She was talking, but he didn’t register the words; he just heard her voice, soft and comforting, while sharp and witty. It was the voice he had known all his life- the voice he had come to know as friendly, as helpful, as trustworthy- the voice he had come to love.

And it was being used by a fucking _fake_ . By some unholy _defect_ , not by the perfect person that it had belonged to. When he heard it, it should bring back memories of the beautiful person that owned it, not bring anger and sadness and fear of this fucking ghost.

Arizona realised that she was looking at him, sadly.

 _I know I don’t belong. But I can’t stop, because_ you’re _doing this._

Not caring that it wouldn’t do shit, he punched her. The fist went right through, and struck some metal behind her, clanging while she tilted her head in an ‘I-told-you-so’ manner. He shouted in frustration.

And suddenly, Arizona was very aware of everything else. The pain in his wrist from smacking a solid metal wall; the unsettling silence that had followed his exclamation; the ten or so guns that he was sure were being aimed directly at a crate that had suddenly shouted.

Kicking himself, he put his pistol in one hand, his dagger in the other, and jumped over the crate.

Mid-air, he had already shot three targets: the most dangerous, who were aimed directly at him, he shot in the torso once each. He landed, rolled, and came out into a crouch, aiming. He fired at four more targets in a row before getting up and running to cover, not bothering to check his kills.

Then followed a very long, very tense moment where nothing happened. None of the remaining troopers moved out of cover, and neither did Arizona; both were waiting for the other to make the first move.

Shrugging to himself, Arizona grabbed a small canister on his belt, twisted the top, and then lobbed it out into the crowd. Shouts of warning were muffled behind a very loud _bang-poof_.

He let himself take his time. Slowly, Arizona walked forward, into the cloud of opaque white smoke. Muffled shouts and confused steps could be heard, although only to Arizona; the troopers were likely all deaf and blind from the half smoke grenade, half flashbang that Arizona had thrown.

In his path, Arizona met a very disorientated soldier. They stumbled into view, a gray silhouetted in the white, and before they had a chance to even see the figure walking towards them, Arizona grabbed them by the neck, pulled them downward, and slotted a blade into the small gap between their neck guard and their helmet. The dagger went in easily, and when he pulled it out, it was slick with runny red blood. Arizona took a moment to wipe it on the dead soldier’s armour.

As the smoke began to dissipate, Arizona was already on the other side of it, and was slipping through the loading bay’s exit. The few remaining troops would find their assailant had slipped them by.

Arizona grinned.

****

_Don’t ignore me. It’s not like you can, anyway._

Not responding, Arizona kept walking forward, DMR out and shouldered. He allowed himself a glance at her.

She was walking beside him, with her helmet off. Blonde hair cascaded down her head, ending in short curls on her shoulders. It swayed as she moved, bouncing, exactly like he remembered.

Sighing, he relented.

_How can I move on if you’re still here. You tell me to find closure, but how the fuck do I if you’re still with me?_

_Well, pretending that everything’s fine isn’t going to help, either._

He fumbled as a lone target rounded the corner, slow to react. He managed to put a bullet in them before they did in him, and slowly, Arizona came up on the wounded innie.

He knelt over the soldier. She was female, dressed in standard trooper gear, and had a bullet wound in the abdomen. She didn’t appear to notice the Freelancer in front of her.

_What?_

He stared at the dying woman for a few seconds, before taking out the knife and holding it to her throat. He put a hand on her head, holding it still, while the dagger hovered above her jugular.

_Why the fuck are you hesitating? Second thoughts? What the fuck is-_

The knife dropped, and the woman died. Raising an eyebrow, Arizona looked behind to judge her reaction. She just stared back, unblinking.

_What, no scolding? No ‘you’re a fucking sadist’?_

He didn’t get the response he was waiting for. He sighed, for more reason than one, and continued on towards the hangar.

****

His first thought was that it was fucking big. It ran the Destroyer’s width, making it about 150 metres long, while it was almost half of that wide, and nearly 50 metres tall. It had docking bays for three longswords, and multiple bays for what he was guessing were those fighter drones he had encountered earlier.

The floor of the hangar was wide and open, to allow easy access of materials, with only a few low retractable catwalks crossing the width; there, the combat raged. Among crates, support vehicles, and the crashed and burning pieces of what looked like a longsword, over a hundred troopers were currently engaged with eight Freelancers; all of them, save for Tex and Arizona.

Arizona had emerged into it on the ground level, near the rear, with the mass of troopers in between him and his team. Which was, to him at least, a great opportunity.

Quickly moving to the start of what would be quick, bloody path through the troopers, Arizona prepped his rifle, his pistol, and his arc dagger, loading and chambering rounds with the firearms and checking the electrostatic generator inside the blade’s handle. He had quickly learned at the very start of his training, that when the combat was just to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible, more weapons won. It was easier to swap weapons than reload, easier to kill with melee than with firearms, and easier to kill quickly with long-range, short-range, and melee-range all available to you.

Quickly, running with softened feet, Arizona attacked.

 **** Six had gone before he was noticed. Even running, Arizona could put a bullet into targets from a fifty metres. And, running, Arizona could easily cover fifty metres in four seconds. Less with armour. So, when the troopers turned to find a Freelancer charging their line, they had two seconds to react, which was not nearly enough time.

Arizona took down three more, missing two of his DMR’s shots, and getting a non-deadly with another, before he was out for his rifle. By then, he had breached the line; hastily constructed metal barricades, immovable cargo containers, and the crashed remains of a large vessel gave him adequate cover.

Three more troopers were directly in front of him, still focused on suppressing the larger group of Freelancers. The panicked shouts of their comrades weren’t fast enough: one died with a dagger in the neck, not even knowing who killed him. The two others turned, and one met the dagger with their face, dying instantly. The other fired at a target that had already sidestepped, and wasn’t able to fire again, because their arm had been ripped out of its socket. The scream was swiftly extinguished.

Grabbing the dagger, aware of the troopers undoubtedly closing in around him, Arizona was quick to move positions. He was also quick to notice the soldiers on his right, his left, behind him- he was surrounded. He swore.

Frustrated, he searched for a way out; unfortunately, there were no holes in their formation, except for the one that took him towards his team, and one-hundred metres of no cover, currently being sprayed by machinegun fire.

_So, what do we do when we’re cornered?_

_Not. Fucking. Now._

_Okay, I’ll make it quick. Hiding isn't an option, reinforcements are unlikely, so your only route is breaking formation._

_Just checked._

_Look up._

He did, and found a catwalk that stretched all the way across the hangar. The left side was broken- destroyed by the ship that had landed on it- but the right side was intact, and led over the formation. It was made of corrugated steel; not enough to stop bullets, but it might be enough to shield him from less attentive eyes.

Support columns held it up, but apart from that, there was no clear way up-

_Since when did ‘no clear way up’ fucking stop you before?_

Arizona mentally shrugged, physically smirking. It only took a glance for him to spot a route up a barricade, onto a container, jumping off of a column, and then grabbing the underside of the walkway. Fucking simple.

He ran, and leapt. His feet landed on the sloped side of a barricade, and then bounced off, towards a cargo container- that, his fingertips grabbed on top of, and he quickly hoisted himself up and onto. He was already halfway to the catwalk, when other concerns presented themselves.

Two rounded the corner, and three bullets took them both down. The first took it in the head, and the second took two in each shoulder- more soldiers quickly followed. To buy himself a little time, Arizona threw another flashbang/smoke grenade, and fired two warning shots, before leaping off the container.

His hands hit the column, palms pressed flat against the steel, and they stuck there. His legs hit next, and as soon as they did, they pushed backwards and upwards, careful to conserve the upward momentum. His hands barely touched the underside of the catwalk. But they stuck.

Confused and disorientated insurrectionists must have been terrified when, less than ten seconds after the smoke grenade detonated, through a cloud of gray, their target started shooting them from the other side.

DMR bullets impacted the cranium of one, two, three, _four_ of them in quick succession, before they regrouped, found cover, and started shooting back. The cloud stopped it from being effective in any way, and soon three more were dead. But more just kept flooding towards him.

After about a minute, Arizona was trapped. Suppressing fire was making it impossible to retaliate; it was like the entire infantry force in the hangar was firing on him. Which, while untrue- only about twenty of the remaining eighty troopers was engaged with him- would explain how through dissipating clouds, a cyan MJOLNIR suit was able to decimate.

In five seconds, ten were dead. Arizona only found out when the sounds of gunfire turned to shouts of terror, and when he looked, he saw a scene of devastation. Bodies littered the ground, while the remaining troopers scrambled from the beast that was upon them.

Carolina tore through body after body, cleaving and hacking with Arizona’s arc sword, while using a simple M6C pistol to keep the farthest foes at bay. Arizona joined in, firing with the DMR, picking off the disarrayed troops. Soon, only blood and still corpses remained.

Arizona moved up to meet Carolina. She was checking the comms, looked mildly satisfied, and then motioned for him to follow.

“Thanks for the distraction. We have about thirty hostiles left standing, all ahead of us. They’re engaged with the rest of the squad, in a firefight, and probably think the twenty bodies back there have their flank covered.” She was obviously smiling at that. “How’s your melee? How quickly can you kill ten Innies?”

He swayed his head, thinking. “With surprise? Depends on the flow, really. I’ll say eight seconds.”

She shook her head, mockingly scolding him. “Got to improve on that, ‘Zona. I can do fifteen in six.”

In response, Arizona brought out his knife, wiped the blood off the blade, and shrugged. His body language clearly showed he valued actions over words. As an afterthought, he said, “‘Zona? Whose idea was that?”

“York’s. Best of a bad situation.”

“Alright, Cal.” he smirked.

She groaned. “I’ll bet on that I get two times as many as you. Seriously.”

“Wager what?” he was serious.

“The other arc blade.” she looked at him, and through her orange visor, he could picture the mischievous grin.

“You’re on.”

Then, the mass of soldiers came into view, and the game was on.

It was a pretty fucked up gamed, if he was being honest with himself.

Three rear guards died first. Two from Carolina’s pistol headshots, and one from Arizona’s DMR neck shot. Both Freelancers ran at the unaware group, Carolina taking the left flank, Arizona the right, and then they merged with the crowd.

Trying to go for the most effective route, and the quickest kills, Arizona chose two soldiers stood side-by-side, and slit both of their throats in one fluid motion. Not breaking step, he plunged the knife into the head of a crouched soldier, rolled over a short barricade, and came up among three in a group.

He stabbed one in the stomach, and then crouched quickly, spinning, sweeping the legs of the other two. Before he finished them off, he brought up the pistol in his left hand, and shot a nearby trooper who had just been alerted. Then, he stuck the knife in one of the downed innie’s skulls, and fired into the brain of the other. _Seven._

A group of four had spotted him. They turned, neglecting to suppress the larger team of Freelancers, and Arizona rolled into cover. Soon, the bullets stopped, as he suspected that they’d realised the rest of the team was still there. When he looked up, he found that one had died- from the trail of the sniper round, by North or Wyoming’s hand.

Staying crouched behind cover, he ran around them; rolling from barricade to barricade, moving as quiet as possible, and soon, he was on top of them. He aimed over the barricade, shot the one who was still looking at his original position, and then leapt over.

As the two suppressing soldiers turned, Arizona dove into the gap between them. He punched more than stabbed a knife into one’s heart, turned, and punched the other in the gut; when that one hunched over in pain and exploded internal organs, Arizona brought a knee up to his head, snapping it upward, and probably breaking the soldier’s neck. To be sure though, Arizona put a bullet in  his helmet, then another in the one he had already shot, and then another in the stabbed one. He recovered his dagger. _Ten_ . _One more_.

He searched. Freelancers were already coming over towards them; York and Wash were walking casually, weapons lowered, which really killed Arizona's hopes.

Carolina came up from behind him, walking with swagger. “Twenty-six, dickhead. You?”

He scowled. “Ten.”

She laughed. “Well, ‘Zona, I’m a nice person. You can keep the shiny knife for today, but I get it back on the ship, okay?”

He scowled again.

_You do realise you just put a wager on how many lives you could end?_

_Holy shit. I really am fucked up, aren’t I?_

Somehow, he was able to make his thoughts sarcastic.

She scowled at him, as he grinned.

_Why do you take pride in being a maniac?_

He shrugged.

_Because the alternative is stopping._


	11. 2.4: Too Fast

“Are you sure that you’re… _Alright?_ ”

Carolina spoke to him through a private com, rather than let the rest of the team get involved. They were holed up in cover, behind short barricades and against the wall, as South prepped a set of blast doors for demolition. On the other side was a couple hundred metres of long corridor, divided into three section by two smaller hangars, which led to the reactor room. Their target.

Arizona glanced beside, at his imaginary friend, who seemed to reappear every few minutes now.

_Considering all things, I think you’re doing pretty well._

“Yeah. I’m holding up. She’s kind of irritating, but in combat, she isn’t distracting. She actually seems to go away when I kill.”

“Fucking _what_.”

He sighed, wishing he hadn’t said that. “Probably just that I’m focusing on something else. Nothing to be worried about.”

“You’re… You’re not going to start killing people in their sleep to get a few minutes away from her, right?”

“Probably not.”

He heard a sigh down the comms, which probably meant Carolina had to forcefully sigh, for her mic to hear. “South says thirty seconds. Weapons ready.”

Arizona checked his DMR; still functioning, round chambered, slightly bloody. His ammo reserves were still fine: he’d started with six magazines, and still had four. His pistol only had two clips left, but finding ammo for it was easy enough.

They were going into long stretches of no cover, which meant any fighting would be done at long range. However, in the hangars overhead catwalks would make it very easy to get close to soldiers, and use short range; there, they’d definitely be unprepared, and easily taken out. Subconsciously, Arizona stroked the grip of his arc knife, held in a holster on his left hip, right next to a short stick that was ready in case things got dicey.

He heard South shout, “Boom in five!”, readied himself to round the corner, and exhaled fully. He inhaled with two seconds left; a deep, slow, full breath that filled his lungs with fresh air. He held it.

The explosives detonated and the titanium-A, which could resist any calibre of conventional explosion, was vaporised by plasma. Blue and purple exploded outwards, while the blast door itself turned into molten fragments of metal, bursting inwards to fill the corridor with chunks of super-hot metal.

Crouching, and leaning around the still melting right side of what was left of the blast door, Arizona took a second to evaluate. Ten or so targets, disorientated by the blast, some probably already dead or wounded by the molten fragmentation. Some were already aiming.

He lined the rightmost one up in his sights, putting their head right in the middle of his circular crosshair, and squeezed the trigger. When the head turned into a spray of red, he moved the gun left until he found another target, and fired at their chest twice. When he went left again, he saw bodies, and when he took his eye away from the scope- disconnecting the visual uplink from the scope to his visor- he realised his team had eliminated all others. He exhaled sharply, then inhaled.

“Move up! Get to the first hangar!”

The team moved forward, guns still up high, aimed down the corridor. They walked quickly, in a unit, with the four front row Freelancer crouched slightly to allow rear teammates clear shots. The corridor had no cover; it was simply fifty straight metres.

Arizona was on the right, at the front, keeping his rifle levelled straight ahead, but not aiming down it. He figured that if anyone did pop out and ambush them, they’d have eight bullets in them instantly, so he served the squad better by not limiting his field of vision. Instead, he looked at the walls, floor, and ceiling; any bulge or panel might be a concealed mine or turret. Luckily, he found none.

_Found none visible. Which, if you were trying to kill a team of Freelancers, you wouldn’t do; you’d make the mine invisible. Or maybe even just blow the entire corridor. Or the ship._

_Not helping right now._

After a minute of nervous, hurried walking, they reached the door to the first hangar: unlike the other, this one slid open at their approach, and hesitant scouts showed that the hangar was clear. They went in.

Arizona was first around the corner, and swept right. They had emerged into the room at half of its height, on a platform that ran the hangar’s length. No catwalks crossed it, though; they’d have to run across the bare open floor. The thought was not appealing.

The team spread out, covering twenty metres of space, with North and Wyoming behind, giving sniper support. York took a hesitant step forward, and soon crossed the full length of the floor. He shrugged, shouted something, and laughed. Then he flinched.

Bullets pinged way too fucking close, forcing Arizona into the nearest cover- a half-metre wide support beam. It barely sufficed. He looked to his right, at the rest of the team, and saw them too taking cover.

Over the team’s com, York shouted, “Dickheads just came out! Above me, on the catwalks. I don’t have a shot.”

Carolina told him to stay put, and organised the team; the attackers were soon sent into cover by two volleys of sniper rounds, and then kept there by automatic fire from South, and explosive munitions from Maine.

Then, Carolina addressed Arizona, almost calmly. “Cross the distance as fast as possible. Once there, I’ll take us on top, and we both CQC our way to the doors. Do _not_ focus on killing everyone, just enough to break formation.”

Arizona exhaled, warily. “Roger.” he managed to keep the trepidation out of his voice.

“We run on my mark.”

He waited, not sure what would stopping the troopers from mowing them down as soon as they came out.

_Oh come on, this is Carolina. She’ll have a plan._

_What, you’re supportive of her now?_

_Just realistic._

“Mark!”

He hesitated for a millisecond, and then rounded the corner of his beam, and started sprinting. Two rockets sailed over his head, impacting the rebel’s cover, and letting him and Carolina cross half of the distance unnoticed. The other half was definitely noticed, but before the soldiers could re-coordinate, both Freelancers were underneath the squad.

“You ever do a half-loop maneuver?”

“What?”

“Basically, you’re going to land upside-down, so twist before you land on your head. You’ll also be facing the other way. Just act fast and you’ll be fine.”

“What?”

Before he understood any of what was happening, Carolina grabbed his arm, and yanked him forward. She was running back towards the team, into line of sight of the innies, which was fucking insane-

_Trust. Just follow instructions._

He did, and as Carolina used her grappling hook to lock onto the underside of the catwalk and swing upward, using the line to swing back around up and over the walkway’s edge, directly onto the enemies, Arizona twisted.

He landed in a hard crouch, legs absorbing the impact, with his arc knife already drawn.

Three people turned to face him; they were all within arm’s reach, which meant one got a knife, the other got a power-armoured punch in the face, and the last was kicked harshly; they flew over the railing, dropping ten metres with a shattered chest. Arizona quickly pulled his pistol, and fired down the line, catching four targets with three bullets.

Then, with chaos caused, he made a break for the blast doors: with five soldiers blocking the way, he leapt over two while slitting one’s throat, landed in a tight roll then rose and shot one’s chest, kept sprinting forward, and slid.

He went underneath the guns of the last two, firing up at the left one, while slicing the leg of the right. When they went down, the knife found their spinal column, and then Arizona was running again.

He found Carolina already there, poised just in front the door. The the troopers were too distracted to notice them.

“What the fuck took you? I said cleave through, smoothly, just enough to distract them.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“You killed fucking half of them.”

He glanced around the corner, seeing the remaining seven troopers. “Happy accident.”

She sighed, saying, “Well fucking come on. I’m sure the team can handle seven guys, and we have a reactor to blow.” then, she said into her mic, “York, we’re ready to advance. You got the-”

A monotone, electronic voice said, “Hacking software uploaded to your armour. Doors will automatically open within three metres, for six seconds.”

“Thanks, Delta.”

_Delta. Not a Freelancer. Hacking specialist, back on the ship?_

He pushed the thought aside, focused on the opening blast door.

Carolina looked at Arizona, nodded, and took off running through the half-opened blast door.

This time, they covered the corridor in a sprint. Carolina was obviously holding back to keep pace with Arizona, who- while still incredibly fast- was still comparatively slow.

“Change of plans. That ambush means they know where we’re headed, which means they’re deploying reinforcements, which means we have to get there as soon as possible. Which means we don’t stop.”

“We… So, what, we just hope we don’t get shot.?”

“You move fast enough so that you _don’t get_ shot. We keep momentum; if a group’s in our way, melee as much as possible, but keep moving forward. If we’re in an open space, shoot, even just to keep their heads down. But _do not_ stop moving.”

They came to the blast door, which slowly started to open. Following Carolina’s lead, Arizona leapt through the tiny crack, and came out in a group of Insurrectionists. He didn’t stop; he ran forward, dancing around hostiles, slitting a throat, pistol whipping a face, kicking a chest, and finally leg sweeping two troopers at once. Throughout it all, he kept his forward velocity, keeping pace with Carolina, and soon they broke the formation.

They emerged from the squad into another hangar’s floor; fifty metres of literally nothing to use as cover, with barricades covering the far wall. Rifles were in the process of being aimed towards them as they ran to the door.

“Suppress!”

As a huge explosion covered their rear- a gift from Carolina- both Freelancers fired on the soldiers guarding the far door: Arizona with his DMR, Carolina with a battle rifle that she had just picked up. He fired at the larger group by the door three times, forcing them down, and then focused on smaller groups whenever they popped up to take aim. The third time, he actually caught one of the soldiers in the arm, putting him down for good.

Although shots were fired at them, no trooper had the balls to take enough time to properly aim, and very quickly, the two Freelancers leapt over the barricades and into the squad.

Once again, Arizona cut a path through, slicing wherever he went. He slit the throat of one aiming trooper, span around their falling body, ran past two without stopping, stabbed one right in his path in the throat. When he saw that the one in front of him was the last one, Arizona jumped up, grabbed their neck, flipped over them, and used the force of a backwards kick to the back of their neck to propel himself forward.

Both him and Carolina reached the blast door at the same time; it slowly slid open, forming a horizontal opening which was only a half metre wide. Carolina leapt through, head first, rolling on the other side; Arizona vaulted it, going through sideways, to get a better look at the stretch in front of him.

It was barely any distance- probably only fifty metres. But for every ten metres that would normally only take half of a second, there were five armed guards, blocking their path. Though they were in disarray, perhaps caught off guard, it would probably take more than five minutes to get through them all.

While falling on top of a trooper, implanting the arc sword in their torso, Carolina shouted, “We need to work together on this- follow my lead!”

She ran forward, ducked low under the bullets of the next trooper, and sliced across, cleanly severing the knees. While she built back speed, Arizona sped past her, taking the next few.

The first of the three he had chosen went down when hot plasma sliced their face in half; as Arizona spun, he jumped, and kicked out his leg, hitting the head of the second. It snapped back so violently that if they weren’t killed instantly, they definitely wouldn’t be a problem. The last one was off to the right, slightly off course, but he’d still have to take them out just to be sure they couldn’t return fire-

The trooper went down in a hail of plasma fire. Glancing behind him, Arizona saw Carolina running, Covenant plasma rifle in her left hand, and saw her fire on two more targets ahead. Not the nearest ones; the ones off to the side, which they’d have to divert to attack.

Arizona realised what she was doing. Use ranged to take out the troops on the sides, while using melee to take out the ones in the centre: it would mean all targets eliminated, while still taking the quickest route to the reactor, while ensuring that any troops ahead of them risked friendly fire if they tried to shoot.

As a cyan blur shredded four troopers, Arizona gained speed, and brought out his DMR; he aimed at the farthest right two figure, moved his arms to compensate for his running, and fired three consecutive shots. One missed; as could be expected from shooting while sprinting. But the first hit one trooper in the chest and the the last hit the second trooper in the shoulder, and they went down, which was all that he needed.

He aimed again, this time on the left, and as he passed Carolina two of two bullets hit another target. He quickly picked out his melee attacks- five soldiers positioned in a zigzag pattern, and shoved his right leg under his left, entering a slide. With slightly more stability, he was able to hit another trooper on the sidelines, before he reached the group.

Flipping, and using the turn to clip on his rifle while he pulled his knife out of its sheath, he stood while slicing upwards, and opened a trooper’s chest. He stepped forward, and using both hands, brutally punched the blade into another’s gut. Then he span to face the trooper behind the other two, who was aiming, and flung his arm towards them; a bright blue blur flew through the air, spinning, before it implanted itself it in the soldier’s neck.

Before the other two had chance to react, Arizona swung up his sidearm, and fired a single shot at the head of the closest one. As their head jerked backwards, the bullet fully penetrated, and hit the other insurrectionist in the shoulder; wanting to be certain, Arizona leapt up in the air, wrapped his arm around the soldier’s neck and twisted around them, viciously slamming their skull into the steel floor. The helmet shattered as it made contact with the ground.

He rolled forward, swiping up the arc dagger out of a squirming trooper’s neck, and watched as six more fell in unison, each killed with a single pistol bullet to the head.

As Carolina flew forward, and began to slice apart the troopers ahead, Arizona realised that there were no more soldiers on the sidelines; the corridor had tightened, turning into a five metre wide stretch. While there were no more outlying targets to worry about, there was now many more directly in front. Arizona put away his pistol, and ran forward.

Caroling was struggling with and endless supply of soldiers; she was having to cross left and right to reach all of them. Arizona ran up, and at the exact moment that she put a sword through someone’s skull, he put a knife into someone’s eye.

She went down, sweeping legs, while he went up, jumping off of the corpse of his last victim and landing on another, blade-first. Through quickly falling troopers, Arizona saw something problematic: a large group was falling back, creating a stretch of clear space, while making a line of aimed rifles. They were only waiting for their doomed comrades to fall before they started shooting.

As he cleanly split a soldier’s throat, Arizona clenched his hand around a rectangular canister on his belt, thumbed a small switch on its side, pushed it upwards, and felt the soft vibrations as the internal electronics warmed up. He threw his dagger into a trooper, jumped, and put his left leg on their torso as they fell backwards; he pushed off into the air, and at peak height, lobbed the grenade at the phalanx. It hit the ground, just behind them.

He glanced left and saw Carolina rushing forward, sword pointed straight at a terrified soldier- she had a hand ready to grab their neck, and it looked like she intended to skewer them.

Realisation hit him; she was going to get a human shield. Following her lead, Arizona stabbed, crouched, and sliced upwards, and when there was only one target between him and the line of guns he brought his dagger down low. With his left hand, he swatted the gun out of the troopers hand, and with his right he stabbed the dagger into the their crotch, up into their abdomen, providing a suitable handle. Arizona tried to ignore the high-pitched screams.

He slammed his shoulder into his meat shield as the grenade went off- the phalanx exploded in a bright blue ball, and fell into chaos as soldiers spasmed with electric convulsions. The few that were still aiming in the right direction fired, but were unable to aim properly, and the few bullets that were on target hit the back of one of their own. The bullets easily over-penetrated, but once they did they pinged harmlessly off of the MJOLNIR’s alloy, with all their velocity and sharpness wasted on the soft interior of the fleshy mobile cover.

Not caring about the shocked troopers, Arizona yanked the knife out of the shield, and ran farther forward. He went through squirming bodies, arcs still spitting at them from the conductive floor, and advanced. He slit a throat, spun, stabbed into face, crouched, shouldered into a torso, leapt forward, shoved a trooper into two more, jumped over their falling bodies, and was mildly surprised when he swung his knife to decapitate, and it hit something solid.

It took Arizona a moment to believe it; his dagger, glowing bright blue from the searing plasma jumping around the blade, was being stopped by another knife. The metal which should have been melting like it was under a welding torch only glowed a dull orange where the blue met it.

He looked up from the blade, and saw a female ODST helmet; he also saw another knife come at him, point first.

He ducked, still holding the other blade in place with his own, and grabbed her armoured hand as it went over his head. As he did, a foot hit his head- hard. Harder than should have been possible, when he was wearing a suit that could survive falls from orbit.

His head snapped back, but he managed to push back with his legs, absorbing some of the impact. Before he let his aggressor get the other hand, he rolled backwards over himself, and came up standing- he was only just able to regain his balance, when another foot came his way.

He dodged it, weaving to the side, and used his elbow to block the swing of the ODST’s left knife. He threw his dagger in the air, used his now free hand to grab her arm, and pulled. When she resisted, pulling him forward, he used the momentum to jump up, kick off her thigh, and use the other leg to brutally slam a hardened toe-cap into her chin. He flipped, landed in a crouch, grabbed the dagger as it spun in the air-

And hesitated.

He heard a scream, a shriek of pain, although he couldn't feel it in his ears.

He remembered how he’d blocked his strike, grabbed his arm, kicked up, flipped, in the exact same way that he’d just done, and then turned.

He remembered Kelly’s shriek.

He remembered watching the axe’s blade cut into her shoulder; the blood gushing out; the way that the scream of pain had turned into a scream of rage. His scream.

He remembered how he had lost himself- given up control of his own thoughts to sheer aggression- and thrown himself onto the perpetrator. Where the full-force grapple had been almost ineffectual, the ensuing flurry of mindlessly savage knife strikes had been terminal.

And in the present, like a warped mirror image of the past, he felt the knife glide through his own chest. It slid between his ribs, and out under his arm; it wasn’t painful, it just felt strange, from the pressure of having something inside him that shouldn’t be there.

Then the blade came out, as seamlessly as it went in, and _then_ he felt the pain.


	12. 2.5: Haunting

A searing heat poured into his chest; fire burned a path from the top of his right pectoral, through his shoulder, and out just above his armpit. The knife had grazed his bone, deflecting off his rib and continuing under his collarbone, and cutting cleanly all the way through him.

His lung had not been punctured: he knew from his scream, which was long and loud, as opposed to the breathy whine he had heard countless times, from when he’d inserted a blade into a back. They never screamed. But he was screaming.

He also knew that his arteries were- for now- fine: blood gushed from the two wounds, spraying in rhythm with his heartbeat, which was going into overdrive with adrenaline. His armour was already applying pressure, re-weaving the fabric of the undersuit to cover the wound, but it couldn’t stop the internal bleeding. Soon, all of his blood would be floating uselessly outside of his organs.

His right arm was unresponsive. When he tried to move it, it flopped slightly, clumsily, without any sort of precision. With his left, hand trembling, he patted over his abdomen, searching for the field med-kit that he desperately hoped could help. His hand was shaking too much. he could feel the kit, a small pouch that held biofoam and hopefully painkillers, but he couldn't get a grasp on it, his fingers kept moving away from-

Pale fingers closed around his arm. They held it steady, allowing him dexterity, and letting him slip his fingers inside the med-kit, enclose them around a short cylinder, and bring it out in front of his eyes.

He couldn’t see it; tears obscured his view so all he saw was a grey blur. And whatever it was, if he injected it wrong, he would only exacerbate the injury.

As he began to panic, the hand enclosed around his own squeezed, reassuringly. A soothing voice told him to stay calm. Familiar, comforting.

_You don’t need to see it. Biofoam has a short needle, while painkillers have a long one. Feel it._

He did, and he felt a short cap on the end of the needle. With her guiding him, he pulled off the cap, put his thumb over the top of the syringe, and moved the needle over to the wound. He held it over his chest, and slowly pushed it downwards.

He shouted as it entered. A hand brushed his forehead, soothingly, as liquid foam forced itself into the destroyed tissue. In seconds, he felt the liquid expand, filling out the wound, travelling along until it reached the other side, filling every open space with burning fluid. Then it hardened, becoming cement, while numbing his entire right shoulder.

The pain was still intense, but not blindingly so. He found he could now focus on other things, like the vicious fight that was happening in front of him.

The female ODST stumbled backwards from a kick to the chest; Carolina followed it up by charging, sword gleaming, and the ODST barely had time to raise her own knife to block it. A microsecond later, the same sword was at her again, and she blocked with the other knife, stepping backwards.

The sword quickly became nothing but a bright blue streak, spinning and striking, as the ODST was steadily pushed farther back, becoming slower at the block with every strike. Carolina was hitting her so relentlessly that the two knives began to glow orange, then bright red, and then blinding white as they heated.

Finally, a swing of the sword hit the ODST too quickly, and the knife that she brought up to block it had no force behind it. The knife, and the ODST’s entire right side of her body flew back. Without any hesitation, Carolina landed a brutal kick to her left side, and it sent the ODST flying back, over the two others that had suddenly appeared.

They levelled rifles at Carolina, who darted into a recess in the wall as bullets sailed through where she had been moments ago. The two firing, also armoured in the ODST gear, began to step backwards. The female one got back up, sheathed her knives, looked at Arizona, and grabbed his stunned body by the neck.

She pulled him back, through a blast door, and punched the emergency shut switch. The blast shield closed immediately, locking down with a half-metre of solid titanium-A. Arizona groaned, and rolled over to look at his surroundings.

He was in the reactor room; on a grated catwalk twenty metres above ground level. It ran down to the centre of the spherical room, where a smaller sphere, with pipes and wires connected to every available spot, vibrated with power. From small cracks in its metal surface, a bright orange glow bathed the entire room in its light.

“Well what the fuck do we do now? Those dickheads’ll burst in here any moment, guns blazing, and any stray bullet could cause a leak. Or blow the fucking thing.”

“Retard. Do you think I brought the Freelancer fuck in here for shits and giggles? We have a hostage. They won’t shoot at one of their own.”

Groaning with pain, Arizona muttered, “You obviously haven’t met the Freelancers.”

“You can shut the _fuck_ up!” The female one, apparently in charge, kicked him on his right side, causing him to curl up. Then she grabbed his neck, hoisted him up, and put her knife- still dull orange from her fight with Carolina- to his throat. He could feel the heat.

“Seriously. One fucking word and I _end_ you.”

He groaned, half pain, half annoyance. “Then you’d have no hostage. Think out your fucking threats _before_ you say them.”

She used her other hand to grab the wound under his right arm, and squeezed. Arizona bit his lip so hard that he started to taste his own blood, but didn’t give her the satisfaction of screaming.

_Why do you fight with them? They have the upper hand, just be complacent. There’s nothing to gain in being prideful._

_I like to think of it more as if I die, right here, then I do_ not _die like a bitch. I go out with sass._

_Better to not go out at all._

_Yeah? Sometimes there is no living. Sometimes no matter what you do, you still die. Sometimes there is no way out. You should fucking understand_ that.

_Not your fault._

“I fucking _know_ that!”

When the three ODSTs, and about ten more troopers that had just entered the room, turned to look at Arizona, he giggled.

“Is he on comms?”

“I don’t think so.” Then, the ODST reached underneath his helmet, and flipped the little switch that toggled his communications.

Arizona, still laughing, said, “No, I’m just a little fucking crazy. Hallucinations of my dead girlfriend, and all that.”

They all stared, and he grinned, suppressing more laughter.

As the insurrectionists stared at the insane hostage with a knife to their throat, the blast door exploded into glowing purple chunks. The two troopers nearest the door were showered in molten titanium, and screamed as their bodies were melted. The screams quickly stopped, quite abruptly.

The rest of the troopers opened fire. Through the steam, hundreds of bullets filled the entrance, keeping anyone trying to get in at bay. After thirty seconds of continual bursts, the firing died down, and the female ODST shouted.

“Freelancer assholes; we have a hostage! Any of you dicks so much as show your face through that hole, and his throat’s getting a lot redder! Understand?”

In response, York shouted, “Sit tight ‘Zona! We’re working on it!”

Arizona narrowed his eyes. “That is a stupid fucking nickname! I demand a better one!”

The female ODST tightened her grip, and pressed the knife against his throat. “Another. Fucking. Word. I dare you.”

He shrugged- or, he moved his arms as much as he was willing to, with a knife pressed against his throat. Then he shouted, “Why does it have to be rela-”

A knee to his spine cut him off. He fell forwards onto the floor, getting a great view of the corrugated steel, before a hand yanked his head up, while the other replaced the knife into position. The ODST started whispering some terrifying threat, but Arizona wasn’t listening.

Instead, he was focusing on the figure walking through the smoke.

Kelly.

It was Kelly; he was sure of that. Blonde hair, green eyes, for some reason she was wearing the MJOLNIR she never had got to wear, sans helmet, and she was carrying two daggers. Long things, made less for slicing and more for stabbing, one facing upwards and one facing downwards. None of the other people in the room could see her; they continued looking ahead.

She spun, hair whipping around as she did, and Arizona was surprised when she slipped one of the daggers into a trooper’s shoulder. He was even more surprised when the trooper slumped, fell, and blood began pouring from the wound. He was fucking flabbergasted when the other troopers began to shout in confusion.

Gracefully, Kelly began to tear through their ranks. She stabbed another trooper in the face, came up in between two more and stabbed them both at the same time, and ducked under the torrent of bullets that the rest of the soldiers unleashed. They still couldn’t see her; they were only shooting at where their comrades were being murdered from.

As a trooper raised their rifle, she put one dagger through their arm, and the other into their chest, neatly piercing their heart. She put a foot on them and pushed off, pulling out her knives. When two troopers fired on her position, tearing through their dead friend’s body, she rolled to the side, circled their left, and stabbed them through the back of the neck. As the other turned, she ducked under their rifle and brought both of her daggers upwards, and put two points through their torso. The blades fully penetrated, coming out on the other side, before she yanked them out and turned to face more targets.

Arizona watched as, one by one, and sometimes in twos, the thing that he was sure wasn’t real killed an entire room of hostiles. She had finished with the troopers, reached the circular catwalk in the middle of the room, was about to slip a dagger into the back of one of the ODSTs-

“He fucking dies!”

Kelly stopped, staring at the ODST with a knife pressed so hard against Arizona’s throat that it was starting to cut through his under-armour, and fell back.

The ODST continued; “If I see one more guy killed by a fucking phantom, he fucking dies!”

The other ODSTs fell back, came within a metre of their leader, and waited. They swept right and left with their guns, searching for what they couldn’t see, visibly afraid. The female kept staring dead ahead, fingers clenched around the handle of her knife, as if it was the only thing keeping her alive. It probably was.

Kelly began to circle around them, flanking. As Arizona craned his neck around to get a better look, she stopped. Hesitantly, she waved. With a knife to his throat, he was careful to wave back discreetly.

She seemed confused. She brought a hand up to her face, cupped it as if holding binoculars, and then pointed at herself. Not sure what to do, and with limited range of movement for hand signals, Arizona touched his forefinger to his thumb- the ‘okay’ signal.

She told him to wait. Slowly, carefully, she approached. She crouched down low, under the ODST’s focus- not that they could see a figment of someone's imagination, anyway- and slipped through the two on point. She came up beside him.

Arizona stared straight ahead as Kelly gently slipped fingers underneath his helmet, switched his comms back on, and switched off his helmet’s speakers. They could now talk privately.

“Don’t speak normally. Make sure your jaw doesn’t move while you speak, or you’ll bob your head like an idiot.” Kelly’s voice was almost a whisper, and seemed slightly… altered.

“What the fuck is happening.”

“I don’t know. How can you see me?”

He glanced sideways, seeing her crouched right next to him. “It’s not that fucking difficult.”

He heard a sigh. “Well, you’re a hostage, and we need to blow this reactor so we can get through turrets and shit. So, if you have any ideas on how to get out of this mess, I’m all ears.”

He thought. What did he have on him? Arc knife and shock staff, which would be useful, but only if he could get the knife off his throat first. Guns would be fairly impractical, so he ruled them out. Apart from that, he had a grapple, incredibly sticky fingers, shock grenades-

Very quickly, he tried to judge how resistant he was to electricity. Probably more than the ODSTs, plus he would be expecting it. The knife holding him in place was held straight on to him, with the insurrectionists elbow sticking out in front; the first thing to contract would be the shoulder muscle, taking the knife away from him, before the elbow contraction brought it backwards. Possibly, into his jugular.

_Fuck it._

“On my belt, left side, there’s a small rectangular canister. Pass it to me. And get to a minimum safe distance of ten metres.”

Kelly carefully picked it up. Arizona opened his hand, and the grenade filled it. He found the switch, pressed it upwards, and started counting down from five.

On two, he tossed it upwards, behind the ODST holding him hostage, where it flew high in the air.

On one, he closed his left hand around the staff, preparing to swing it, and readied the other to grab the arc dagger.

The grenade reached peak height as he counted zero. Before his body began to spasm randomly, he slammed backwards, forcing the knife away from his throat.

Blue light filled his visor. He was dimly aware of falling backwards, a sharp point hitting his throat, and then him ripping himself out of the ODST’s grasp. There was a lot of shouting; someone was filling his ears with vulgar language. And then, his vision returned slightly, and he saw the knife a millisecond before it would have pierced his skull.

He dodged left, going underneath the strike, and came up onto his attacker with his shoulder. They both fell down, while Arizona regretted hitting someone with a body part that had just been stabbed. He rolled in agony for a few seconds.

Dimly aware of smashing steel behind him, he focused on controlling the pain; _just don’t be a bitch_ , he said to himself, while slowly curling his hand into a fist. As he took over, making the pain _his_ bitch, he slammed it into the ground, and jumped up.

He witnessed an amazing sight; a three-on-one, between three heavily armoured ODST insurrectionists, and one MJOLNIR-minus-helmet dead person, who the three others were having a hard time seeing.

One of the ODSTs, a big idiot who wasn’t wearing sleeves, grabbed out with both arms, and wrapped Kelly in a tight bear hug. Another, with about a dozen grenades strapped to him, viciously punched at what he saw as thin air, and hit Kelly right in the gut. She gasped for air, winded, but before the grenade ODST could land another punch she swung her legs upward, twisting her whole body up. The next punch hit the exposed muscles ODST, making him stagger back, dropping Kelly. She crouched low.

Finally, Arizona realised he should help: he brought out his electric staff, spinning it in his hand, and adopted a slightly crouched stance.

Before he struck, Kelly shouted out; “I have these guys- blow the fucking reactor!”

As she shouted it, the female ODST turned towards him, knife gleaming. Kelly wrapped an arm around her neck, swinging her back, and then started blocking wild punches from the big sleeveless ODST. Slowly, Arizona backed off, and then turned to the reactor.

He stared at it for a second, thinking. It was encased by a hardened metal sphere; probably strong enough to contain near-instant evaporation of whatever they used as coolant. Which meant standard munitions would probably be useless. It would also be made of heat-resistant materials, for obvious reasons, so he couldn’t cut through with plasma. Which, unfortunately, left the boring approach.

He leant over the nearest console, looking for something promising: it showed some diagnostics, fuel reserves, output, but nothing useful. He searched through more screens; coolant levels, peak power supply, demand, output again, a flashing ‘critical’ sign- all worthless to someone trying to explode it.

Sighing, he looked back up at the sphere. he noticed the many pipes going into it, the grey sludge that was speeding through them, how it came out the other side with a dull redness to them-

“Move!” shouted Kelly.

He turned in time to see a knife fly past his head, going right through where it had been a second before. He followed it round, seeing where it had implanted- a small pipe, which was now spewing grey coolant all over the floor, before it leaked through the corrugated steel. As more coolant pushed through, it picked up the knife, pulling it in and dragging it into the reactor core.

Arizona’s eyes widened. He nodded to himself, then cursed as he remembered he didn’t carry any grenades. Not sure what to do next, he slowly turned, saw the three ODSTs and the one dead girl battling it out, and saw the grenade guy get slammed in the face with a metal foot. He slid across the floor.

Moving quickly, Arizona ran through the other three, ducking under the swipe of muscle-man, leaping over stabby-bitch, and running past a confused Kelly.

“You’re supposed to be blowing!”

He laughed, as he savagely booted the grenades ODST in the face. He moaned as he went back onto the ground, after trying to get up from a previous kick. Arizona crouched on top of him, grabbed a couple of the most-explody looking grenades, and then thought, _why not?_ as he pulled out the arc dagger, ready to finish him.

The dagger came down, slowed, stopped as it was about to pierce the guy’s throat, then started coming back up. Confused, Arizona realise he was being lifted up, by a couple of extremely defined arms, before he went over himself and his head slammed into the ground.

As fierce fighting went on above him, Arizona crawled, again painfully aware of how painfully his shoulder was in pain, towards a pile of grey goo. He reached it, panting, and pulled himself upwards. Standing on one knee first then pulling his leg up, standing straight, he reached upward, pulled one pin then the other, and slammed the grenades into the tiny slit of the coolant pipe.

He shoved them way into the breach, and instantly they were swept away by the grey tide. They flew past Arizona, through the pipe, and disappeared into the sphere of the reactor core. He grinned, then realised what he had done.

“HIT THE FUCKING DECK!” he shouted, before throwing himself onto the floor, arms raised to cover his head.

Three more bodies hit the ground, Kelly, muscles, and knives, and waited for the impact.

A very dull, almost inaudible thud came from inside the sphere.

Four heads raised at once, looking. Arizona saw grenade man, standing up, unaware of what was happening. He looked around, unsure of why everyone was lying down.

Arizona muttered, “Fuck. Thought that would be better.”

He sighed, a long, drawn-out sigh, that seemed to last for longer than it should have done. Then Arizona stopped sighing, but the noise continued- sort of like a kettle, except instead of taking five minutes to turn from a deep steaming sound to high-pitched screech, this one took five microseconds.

A massive boom erupted from the core, as steam blew out, filling the room. Five people said, “Fuck!” at the same time, except one was caught in the middle as the force of the explosion sent them flying: grenade guy hit the wall with a dull smack. The smoke began to clear, and Arizona congratulated himself.

Then he was about three metres lower, in an instant. The entire catwalk that surrounded the core hand shifted, losing balance, and had thrown him down; he began to slide, before he caught onto the ground with nano-gloves. Even then, the entire floor started to slide downwards.

His left hand fell off- to be more accurate, the piece of flooring attached to his left hand fell off- throwing his body around, giving him a spectacular view of what was below. The steam created from the eruption, not made from water but from coolant, pooled at the bottom of the spherical room. It condensed, creating a puddle of thousand-degree grey goo, topped with a cloud of thousand-degree grey smoke. A beam support fell in, and melted almost as quickly as it fell.

Terrified, Arizona looked back up, and flung his left hand back onto the 35 degree incline, then started scrambling frantically; he reached the top of the broken-off portion as the blown-out remains of the core fell into the molten pool.

Whatever the fuck was powering the ship, it burned bright; Arizona hadn’t even noticed the lights go out, but now they were back, and ten times as strong- the entire room was illuminated in bright orange light. Arizona didn’t waste a second thinking about it.

He sprinted forward, towards a door that he wasn’t even sure would open, as catwalk broke off around him. He reached the edge of the circular ring, and started running down one of the straights that led to the edge of the room, while it fell away behind him. He was thirty-metres, twenty-

Arizona stopped, seven milliseconds before he would have died.

Not five metres in front of him, a gargantuan pipe fell over the catwalk, smashing his path ahead into pieces. Where there was just before a solid walkway, there was a ten-metre long stretch of fucking nothing. On top of that, now with nothing but a few flimsy beams to support it, the catwalk he was standing on began to tip backwards, moments from falling into the pool of what was, basically, lava.

Not having any other option, Arizona jumped. He leapt, unbalanced, with no run-up, and not in any position for a graceful landing.

He went straight for four of the ten metres, peaked at five, fell for another three, and then dropped below the catwalk for the remaining two, frantically, desperately throwing out his hands for anything to catch onto-

As he fell, his vision lowered, and he saw death: a pool of red, with glowing white spikes sticking out of it as metal melted, lied below him. He screamed as his left hand’s ring finger hoisted up his entire weight: about a half ton.

After swearing, he looked up. Kelly’s black gloved hand was attached to the very tip of his finger, held on by tiny little machines. Arizona breathed the deepest sigh of relief he ever had, as she pulled him up onto the relative safety of the platform. His arm came up, then his torso, and then he rolled onto sweet, sweet stability.

He stared into the fires. Molten red saturated with melting yellow, and in the centre, a gleaming star of burning blue, bathing the entire room in a blue glow. He noticed the steam.

Between shaking breaths, Arizona said, “You should probably put your helmet on. Toxic gases and shit.”

“Are you fucking stupid?”

He narrowed his eyes. That voice was definitely _not_  Kelly’s; it was sharper, deeper, and _Southern_. He looked at her.

First of all, he realised that she was, in fact, wearing a helmet. And that the armour that she was wearing was not the one that Kelly had designed for herself- and never got to wear- but a set of standard Mark VI MJOLNIR. And finally, he realised that he knew the terrifying stare that particular Mark VI helmet could give, like no other.

“Tex?”

“Who the fuck else?”

He stared.

_Invisible to others, great fighter, and_ not _dead… Fuck. It was Texas._

He wished that he could have been annoyed, distraught, or angry. But he had never got his hopes up about Kelly being alive anyway: he was too dumbfounded. So instead, he just laughed, a quiet chuckle to himself, while Agent Texas dragged his limp body away from the burning fires of what was, essentially, Hell.


	13. 2.6: Broken Trust

Texas stayed for a short while. Almost tenderly, she leant him against a wall, removed the armour from his chest, and attended to the stab wound passing from the upper chest to below the armpit. Her own hands- deft and delicate, whereas Arizona’s had been clunky with pain- did a much better job than his own. After that, she had stepped back, given him a supportive nod, and fucked off elsewhere.

Arizona sighed, half from the lingering pain. He was sat against the sloping wall of a hexagonal corridor- wider on the floor and ceiling- with plenty of struts and support beams holding it all together. And providing useful cover for anyone who might need it. Right now, he was staring at the opposite wall, solid metal with nothing interesting about it, while slowly flexing his right arm.

The shoulder still hurt. Badly. But his right hand was regaining dexterity, and his arm was beginning to get back to full use. Soon, he would be able to move it completely and accurately, but not without pain. Pain he could handle, though.

He held his sidearm in his left hand. He was extremely thankful that he was ambidextrous- although, really, that was a given. No-one was selected for ONI programs with only one good hand. Still, Arizona didn’t feel totally comfortable holding it with his left: that was his blade hand.

Despite that, he was extremely grateful to be ambidextrous when he heard footsteps. Many footsteps. Possibly as many as ten pairs, running, and very close to his position- just around a nearby junction.

Groaning, he lifted himself off the ground, pressing his back against a metre-thick strut, already in cover for their approach. One man against ten- and Arizona had one good hand, no more tactical equipment, and probably couldn’t hit them at 50 metres range. _Fucking brilliant._

He let them all get around the corner first- it would keep them out of easy cover, and also up his chances of overpenetrating and hitting two targets with one bullet. Once he was sure every footstep was directly behind him, he turned around, and stuck his head and weapon out of cover.

With his left, he aimed at the large clump of soldiers pressed together in the tight hallway, and swept the gun across them. He emptied his magazine- twelve shots- into the group, before slamming back into cover to reload.

He popped back out the other side, and took a moment to analyse the carnage. Of the eleven troopers, five were on the ground, dead or incapacitated; the rest were in disarray, slowly raising their weapons. He picked off two more with ease, before barrels started pointing in his direction, and he went back behind thick metal.

With four left, plus the inaccurate fire of already shot troopers, Arizona didn’t want to risk poking his head out again. Support fire started to rain down on his strut, keeping him at bay- while they probably advanced, helped their wounded, and found suitable cover. Which could stretch out the firefight to ten minutes.

Gritting his teeth, Arizona put the gun in his right hand, shot blindly around one side of the strut, threw the pistol into his left, and then twisted out of cover. He came down into a crouch, half-exposed, with both hands holding the gun steady.

Surprisingly, one of the four was already dead- killed by blindfire. Of the other three, two were quick to aim at the newly positioned target- and so were also quick to die- while the last took too long turning. Almost lazily, Arizona put the helmeted head between the iron sights on his pistol, and gently squeezed the trigger.

The rest were easy enough. Two troopers holding their rifles in unsteady arms, and quickly dispatched with single shots to the head. Three groaning, dying troopers, released from their pain with the sharp, hot edge of a dagger, and one who had flung down their weapon- complicating the matter.

“Please! Don’t do this! I- I can help you! I know stuff!”

Arizona shook his head. He never felt bad about this kind of killing, but it always ended with a mandatory visit to the psychiatrist; some bullshit about PTSD that he had never had any problems with. He studied the knife, tauntingly, making the soldier shit himself. Probably literally. He was about to the plunge the knife into their skull…

“I know what you came here for! Where it is! I can tell you!”

In any other situation, he would have been murdered right there. But just now, prompted by a dead man, Arizona realised that he didn’t even fucking know what their fucking mission objective was.

_What the fuck. How did I not notice this._

_Probably too distracted by the phantom girlfriend who’s following you around._

As Kelly stepped into view, grinning, he considered the trooper. Only for a moment, though.

He picked up the soldier with his right hand- which was now almost back to normal- and held him to the wall by the chest. With his left, he positioned the knife hovering in front of their face.

Arizona hadn’t even realised; the arc dagger was also fucking excellent for intimidation. As it glowed bright blue, electric arcs sparking slightly on the rebel’s helmet, and heat emanating enough to singe the skin, the soldier recoiled.

“So, what is it that I’m looking for?”

The trooper gulped. “The- the case, the, uh, the cryotube, right?”

“If you say so.”

The troopers eyes went wide at that. Pretty fucking funny, on Arizona’s end.

“It’s in cryo storage delta, down past engineering- just take it! I don’t care if you do! It’s just some shitty contract anyway!”

Arizona nodded, reassuringly. Just a little bit, he held the knife away from the trooper, making him sigh in relief. Arizona asked, “Contract with who?”

“I don’t know! We’re just delivering to Charon’s headquarters on Reach.”

Arizona smiled. Charon was an industrial complex- not on the same level as TRAXUS industries, but close. They were major providers for the UNSC war effort; they were also, allegedly, major providers for the insurrectionist war effort. Which would explain why the package was being delivered by insurrectionists- and how insurrectionists got their hands on a UNSC Destroyer.

“And what do they want a cryotube for?”

The trooper frowned. “The cryotube? No, they want what’s in it- probably some biological weapon, or something that they have to keep frozen. Large enough to need a man-sized freezer.”

Arizona nodded again. “So why does Charon want it?”

“I don’t know. Experiments? Weapons development? I told you where it was!”

Finally, Arizona sighed. The guy had started making assumptions- which meant he had no viable info left to give. He gave the terrified trooper two friendly pats on the shoulder, and then jammed the dagger through his throat.

The look on his face was priceless- like he’d been betrayed by his best friend. He went down, gargling on his own blood, as Arizona headed towards engineering, with an almost invisible swagger in his steps.

****

Before he was even in the room, Arizona could hear the sounds of a massive firefight from inside engineering: he went in through a small maintenance passage, careful to not be seen, and emerged on the top floor of a gargantuan, twenty-deck room. The floor followed the edges, forming a massive, multi-layered U-shape, around the enormous twin engines of the _Staff of Charon_ \- what was left of them, at least; the giant cylinders seemed to be ripped at the rear, ending abruptly, where the rearmost section of the room showed the void of space.

Random bursts of fire went from floor to floor, across the U, towards the centre. Intermittently, twin bursts of four rounds of sniper fire would sound out, the loud _crack_ able to be heard over the constant fire, and eight trails of tracer smoke would make a web from a single point, to the falling bodies of eight troopers.

Following the map that Carolina had given him on the pelican ride, Arizona looked across the room, at the blast door to the cryogenics bay. It was two decks down, and all the way at the end of the U-shaped floor; it was at least 500 metres away. And lined with ragtag groups of soldiers.

What they lacked in strength, or skill, or intelligence, they made up for in the number of guns they had. Arizona contemplated a long, hard, bloody frontal assault, cutting a line through their defences-

And then he was sidetracked by a beautiful sight: green flames that reached from the bottom floor all the way to the ceiling, licking at the edges of the engines, melting entire sections of floor, and all the troopers stood on them.

A familiar voice said on the comm, “Start taking down targets. Cryo bay’s up in that corner, and we have a long way to go to get there. And had anybody found ‘Zona yet? Is he dead?”

Smirking, Arizona said into the mic, “Still here, Cal. I’m up on the top floor.”

“Seriously, can I get a fucking location on him?”

“Right here.”

“Dickheds, every one of you. South; fucking find him.”

He frowned. “Carolina? Respond.”

Nothing.

Sighing, he ducked behind the broken hull of a tank, and took of his helmet. On the back left- where the comms were housed- an ugly scar showed cut wires. Probably that fucking ODST that had done it, while he ripped himself from her knife at his throat. At least he still had the redundancy, right on his shoulder-

_Shit._

He grimaced. At least he could still receive comms, for all the good that did.

Slipping the helmet back on, seeing the familiar heads-up-display, and bringing his DMR to hand, Arizona climbed onto the scorpion tank’s tread, leant over the driver’s compartment, and took aim. He saw at least fifty targets, all focused on the Freelancers below.

He fired eight shot in quick succession- and an eight-man group fell. The rest of the troopers turned at the fire, and scrambled for cover: in their confusion, seven more were shot, until Arizona ran out of bullets. He jumped down off the tank, reloaded his rifle, and then put it on his back. He pulled out the dagger for his left, the pistol for his right, and this time it felt fucking good. He was barely noticing the grievous wound he had taken.

Over the comms, Carolina said, “Okay, team. Listen very carefully. It is fucking _imperative_ that we find this cocksucker. Shouldn’t be too fucking difficult. I’m heading up- getting the package is still the primary objective, but getting there first is also _pretty fucking important_..”

Arizona’s mouth twitched, in a frown. _First? Who the fuck else is coming?_

Running while almost crouching, he went wide around the troopers, ducking behind boxes and crates and pieces of machinery. He kept moving forward, until he rolled from a warthog carcass to a large recycling bin, and heard the whispered mutterings of soldiers only a few metres ahead.

Stealth was key; if he could murder them all without any one of them alarming the other groups, all the rest would think that he was still over by the scorpion. Which would make it much easier to go around. Or kill them all.

Arizona chanced a glance around the bin, and saw a very long, short wall. Probably a large missile hull. Whatever it was, it would provide the perfect cover for a team of about ten, which meant that they were, more than likely, behind it. Smiling in anticipation, Arizona readied his knife and his magnum, and started to creep towards it.

In his peripheral, he saw another target; this one he ignored. Or at least, he tried to ignore; he could still feel her judging him.

_You take way too much pleasure in your job._

_It’s why I do it so well._

There were three troopers aimed over the wall, guns pointing away from Arizona, firing in short bursts. They were all zoomed in, so they didn’t notice the figure creeping up on their side until it way too late.

Breaking into a sprint, Arizona shot the farthest two at short range- both clean headshots- and vaulted over the pipe, landing on the other, blade first. It pierced another’s neck, going straight through and poking out the other side with a bright blue glow.

The six other troopers in cover scrambled. They got up out of their crouch, staggering backwards, away from the seven foot bulking Freelancer with the plasma knife. By the time they gotten their guns back up, and pointed in the right direction, one more was already dead.

Running towards the last few, Arizona ducked under fire, span around one while opening their abdomen from waist to asshole, and then stepped back up straight. He pistol whipped one in the face, snapping their neck, and then half-turned, using the momentum to slam the dagger’s point into a visor. It shattered completely with the force, and the lifeless body crumpled.

He realised the last two were dead- a cursory glance showed them to be covered in blackened burns, some still glowing slightly blue. Which meant they had been killed by plasma fire. Which meant that right behind him-

He heard about fifty rifles go full automatic, nearly at the exact same time. The sound was deafening- it came from every direction, and completely filled the air. It didn’t even sound like shots anymore- just a constant spray.

He barely heard over the auto fire, even though this sound came out right next to his ear, “Fuck! I need support up on the top deck- there is way too fucking many troopers up here. And hurry the fuck up!”

_That is why you don’t attack a fucking platoon head-on._

Arizona grinned. This would be the perfect chance to show off; he was behind enemy lines, while they were focused on something else. He could kill fifty soldiers, and then waltz over to Carolina. He was getting a cocky smile just thinking-

“We do _not_ let Arizona get to the cryo bay!”

He stopped for a second. Standing up straight, and looking over to Carolina’s position, his eyes narrowed.

_My own CO doesn’t want me to reach the objective- which she didn’t tell me anything about- before anyone else does; which means she’s trying to hide something from me._

_Didn’t she seem a little too perfect? Like you’d ever have the luck to meet someone who doesn’t try to fuck you over._

Cursing, and slamming his foot into a nearby corpse, he glared at her. He knew she was out there, somewhere, staying in cover from the torrent of bullets. _Fuck_.

Somewhere, in some far corner of his mind, he _did_ realise that he was being irrational. The most likely answer was that Carolina was doing this to protect him, or was just following orders- which while still not great, wasn't exactly a betrayal, and was something he could understand. It was probably an overreaction, when this was just one deception that he didn't even fully understand- and it was definitely true that sometime in the future, if he survived long enough, Arizona was going to do the same to her. A white lie, or a mistruth, or full-fledged manipulation, for whatever reason. So, if he was being rational, he couldn’t blame her.

After ten years of being on the receiving end of manipulation, in everything from his relationships to the people he had assassinated, and finally facing all of that: vowing to never be controlled again, losing his love for it, trying to make amends for actions he never comprehended-

Arizona was _not_ a rational person.

He knelt down onto a dead trooper, removed their helmet, ignored the messy opening on the side of their face, and pulled out the helmet’s comm unit. Keying it to his own team’s channel, he breathed a few times, quieting the anger, and forcing himself to speak like everything was fucking _fine_.

“Cal, this is Arizona. That crazy bitch broke my comms, so I’m using a dead guy’s. I can only broadcast, so don’t bother responding- I’m in the clusterfuck. Heading to secure the package.”

The next ten seconds of utter silence were _fucking amazing._

York said, “ _So…_ What do-”

“YOU’RE FUCKING _KIDDING_ ME!”

Arizona laughed, just managing to shut off the microphone before he burst out.

“Everyone, up here now! I need covering fire, support, snipers, whatever the fuck- we _need_ to move forward.”

Arizona switched off his own comms, and turned away.

_Good luck getting through fifty fucking troopers. Cunt._

As he stomped towards the cryo bays, he met a group of five troopers, running towards cover- apparently, reinforcements were deploying. Fucking fantastic. These ones, however, were right in his fucking way, and recoiled at the sight of him.

He leapt into them. Half-decapitating one as he held the knife out at throat level, and crushing the ribs of another as he landed on them with a half-a ton of weight, he went past them all, leaving three confused and horrified targets.

Quickly, he turned, and shot all three in the head. Before their bodies had hit the ground, he had turned again, and was headed towards whatever the fuck it was Agent Carolina desperately didn’t want him to find.

As he walked, something caught his eye- a bright green flame. A small fire caused by the massive explosion earlier, burning the fuel from a small pipe heading towards the reactor. Where it pooled on the floor, the steel slowly melted, dripping the molten, burning liquid onto the lower floor, and then the next one down, all the way to the very bottom.

Struck with a sudden, crazy idea, he searched for a larger pipe- he saw one entering the reactor, followed it back, up, onto the ceiling, and realised it went directly overhead. It was at least ten metres wide, whereas the other had been only one. And if that could create a gaping hole in the floor…

He chuckled as he fired up at the pipe. Tiny little spurts of fuel came out, spraying the floor with little droplets. It wouldn’t suffice. He need something with a little more power, a little more impact-

As he slid the gauss rifle over his shoulder, it unfolded; barrel swinging down from its compacted state, scope rising out of the body, stock extending, grip sliding out, and then the whole length of the gun pushing outwards, creating a square barrel with tiny little boxes sticking out along its length. When he held it in both hands, the gun started to hum.

He aimed straight up, not bothering to be precise, and fired. A solid metal slug shot out at around a thousand metres per second, and went straight through the pipe, coming out above it, and implanting in the metal ceiling. Arizona started to run away from the pouring fuel, towards the objective, as the stream became larger and larger, coating the deck in liquid.

Once at a safe distance, he watched. The fuel had drenched everything, and was slowly spreading across the floor- towards the small fire of the smaller pipe. He gave it about ten seconds before the entire thing lit up.

Suddenly, he remembered something; Carolina might be in there. She might get caught in the flames, burned to a crisp-

He almost tried to think of something to save her, until he realised that he _didn’t fucking care_ if she was in it.

He smiled as green fire engulfed the deck, wall to ledge, fifty metres across, in massive green flames. They grew, higher and higher, fueled by the still leaking pipe, almost reaching it, as the deck began to melt away underneath it...

_And good luck getting over that burning pit of death. Dick._

As the floor fell away, leaving a fifty-metre wide gap in the floor, a tendril of flame licked at the underside of the fuel line. At first nothing happened; then, the pipe began to glow from within. A bright green glow, drowning out even the fire melting through layers of flooring, as giant jets of flame spewed out from the hole in the pipe. It glowed brighter, brighter, becoming so bright that his helmet went monochrome to protect his sight-

Arizona realised he should start running. He turned away from the pipe, gave his visor a moment to turn from all-black to a little bit of colour, and sprinted to the blast doors. Troopers were running with him- only half as fast, and not caring even in the slightest about the Freelancer. He ran through an entire crowd, shoving terrified soldiers aside, and leapt into the open doors.

He slammed his fist onto the emergency close button, and instantly, thick plexiglass walls jammed close. They clean cut off one trooper’s outstretched arm, and cut another in half at the waist. Arizona pulled out his pistol, and quickly killed the four others who had made it inside.

He slowly turned back. At least ten soldiers were on the other side, banging on the clear door, as the stronger blast-proof shields slowly rose. Arizona almost- _almost_ \- felt bad for leaving them to die.

The last he saw of them was their silhouettes, writhing in agony, as the entire room behind them turned into bright green fire. Flame licked at the shield, making the plexiglass steam on _his_ side. As the troopers fell to the floor, charred bodies melting along with everything else, the half-metre titanium-A blast shields closed, obscuring the carnage.

The only clue as to the destruction on the other side was a flashing red warning light, and the faint sounds of _crack_ _s_ and _pop_ _s_.

Arizona switched his coms back on, and all he could hear was a string of obscenities- Carolina's the loudest of them all.


	14. 2.7: Silence of the Answer

By the time they had realised, half of them were already dead.

The remaining five put up a valiant effort. One rushed forward, attempting a shoulder-barge, and instead only found the point of a dagger, gleaming blue. In a flash, the same dagger was in the farthest one back, and before their body had hit the ground, two of the last three had their legs kicked out from under them. In the time it took for the first soldier that had been leg-swept to get their bearings, the standing trooper’s neck had been snapped and the full force of MJOLNIR’s hydraulic stomp had crushed another one’s head.

The last remaining soldier looked up, and saw a black behemoth of armour crouched low, staring right back at him, opaque visor centimeters from his face.

He recoiled.

“Now, before you do anything idiotic-” Arizona said, while picking up the dropped gun and ripping out the firing pin- “Just hear me out. Or die, whatever.”

The trooper- male, late twenties, and that was as personal as Arizona was willing to get with someone he would probably kill- stared back, blankly, consumed with terror.

“I’ll take that as you want to talk. Brilliant. So, what is it you’re defending?”

The trooper bit his lip, obviously weighing up giving away secrets with horrible torture. Which obviously meant that he did know where the objective was, and that he wasn’t good at hiding information.

Sensing how desperately the soldier wanted to live, Arizona considered bargaining with him- promises of life could be very persuasive. “So, basically, I really don’t care about you. You can live or die, who gives a shit. But the- the-”

Something nagged at him, from the back of his brain. Although the back of his brain did feel a lot like it was at his side, hand on his shoulder.

_This guy’s shitting themselves over torture. Basic techniques will give you the location in seconds. Which is important, since your own team is hunting you down._

Arizona gritted his teeth, took a second to contemplate, came to the same answer as his subconscious did, and sighed.

_Being humane takes too long, and there’s no point when the guy will die anyway. Better this way._

“Nevermind about that. Location of the package. _Now_.”

Arizona gave him a second, which the soldier left as silence, before plunging the knife into his upper thigh, and twisting. The stabbing, twisting motion, and the heat must have been unbearable, because after three seconds of screeching the soldier pointed to a door. After another short twist, they then divulged its exact location; cryogenics bay C, pod #157.

Arizona patted the soldier on their good leg, and then grabbed their head and smashed it into the ground. Technically, the guy could still live- if they got off the ship soon enough- however small those chances may have been.

Pacing towards cryogenics, Arizona tapped back into his team’s comms. There was the standard shit about cover and suppressing fire, punctuated with a few outbursts from Carolina. Mainly calling Arizona a cunt, or more shit about him _not_ getting to the package.

_What the fuck is up with that?_

_Well, probably something that if you found, you’d flip your shit over. Only thing that really makes sense._

He slapped a hand onto his helmet. _Can I not think to myself now?_

_You are. You just have two selves._

He grimaced. _So what am I going to do about Cal? She’s going to find me, sooner or later._

_Just get a little inventive. I’d bet she’d never expect to have her head ripped off by a gauss rifle shot at close range._

_… I meant in a non-lethal manner. Like talking._

Kelly took a step ahead of him, turned, and grinned.

_Yeah, you could do that too._

He scowled at her, wasn’t watching as the door opened to the cryo bay, and was nearly shredded by heavy machinegun fire.

He swore as he ducked behind the wall, closed his eyes for a few seconds, and got into the right mindset.

The LMG would be on a turret, behind a barricade, likely with a bulletproof plexiglass screen. Which would protect it from bullets.

Reaching behind his back, Arizona pulled out a long, sniper-like rifle, watched as the magnetic coils folded out and charged, and loaded into it a very long armour-piercing gauss round. Or, more accurately, a solid metal spike.

Which, while similar, was _not_ a bullet.

He held his breath, and span, crouching low, finding the target, and fired just a little lower than the gunner. Although Arizona was back into a cover as soon as the shot fired, he knew that the round had gone through the LMG, wrecking it, and then hit the trooper. It might have overpenetrated, or it might have been disfigured from hitting the gun, hit the soldier with a blunt edge, and sent them flying back, pinned to the far wall.

Instead of wasting time thinking about that, though, Arizona used the moment of ceasefire- in between the LMG being destroyed, and the rest of the squad realising the LMG had been destroyed- to rush. He sprinted, finding out what the room looked like after he had ran into it, and headed for a series of short barricades.

He leapt over them, and landed between two troopers. He punched one in the leg, span and sliced the other’s chest open, and then returned to the first, burying the knife into their head. Arizona whipped out his pistol, shot down the length of the barricades, killing five more with eight bullets, and then turned the other way.

He ducked under a burst of fire, shot the shooter, shot two others in the process of aiming, and slammed into the ground before a hail of fire took him.

Behind him, above where he had entered, there was a 10 metres up observation bay, filled with guns. All of them were pointing down at the very small barricade that was now only barely protecting Arizona.

He squashed himself into the protective space, watching as stray bullets ripped apart the dead body of one of the troopers. Cursing, he wished he had brought grenades. Not the shitty little electric things that he’d found with short notice, but the _good_ stuff. The cluster-grenades that fired out a dozen smaller munitions; the remote-detonated C-12 plastic explosive; the continually firing incendiary grenade. Even a fucking standard grenade would suffice-

He squinted, looked a little closer at the decimated body, and sighed. The grenade belt was empty- although a body a little farther away did have two lovely grenades, hanging off the side. And right in the firing zone of about twenty soldiers. Suddenly, Arizona grinned, as he was about to do something he’d always wanted to do.

To the soldiers up, firing on a piece of cover, it must have been infuriating to see the cover just get up and walk. Holding the thick metal like a turtle’s shell, Arizona inched towards the grenades, found them, and wasted no time in lobbing the fuckers right into the squad.

Screams, death groans and rattles, and the curious smacking sound of limbs hitting the walls told Arizona it had worked perfectly. He looked over the barricade, DMR in hand, aimed… and saw them all aiming sideways, at someone else. Firing at nothing.

Then one died, seemingly from nowhere, and Arizona realised. As the others died, one by one, falling to an invisible foe, Arizona helped to pick off the last few, and then waved at empty air in the observation bay above..

“You fucking cocksucker! We had to use this stuff, idiot!”

Tex’s voice came before her body, as the cloak peeled off her armour, revealing the black Mark VI. She shook her head, muttered some insult, and slipped a hard drive into a terminal. One of the few terminals, Arizona realised, that he hadn’t blown to pieces with the grenades.

He put a hand behind his head, rubbing, and turned away, too embarrassed to look at her.

“By the way, Carolina’s going to be here in about five minutes. You seem to have pissed her off, so I’d leave well before then. Take into account that she can run five times faster than you.”

He suddenly remembered he had run away from the team, on a very weak case of miscommunication. “So.. You don’t give a shit about that?”

She didn't look up from the terminal. “Nah. It’s some stupid order from the Counsellor, not Carolina. We’re not supposed to let you see the package. Fucking ridiculous. Why even have you on the fucking team then?”

She didn't wait for an answer. “Give me about twenty more seconds and I’ll know which of these freezers is our target. This is high-level encrypted shit.”

Smiling, Arizona walked over to pod #157. The room was filled with cryo pods- they lined the long walls of the room, and formed an island in the middle, totalling about sixty. Each was designed to fit a single occupant, freeze them, and with science, keep them from dying. Or maybe they did die, and the pods just let them come back to life.

Most of the current pods were empty, but a few still had people in them. Naked soldiers, all coated in a thin layer of ice. And near the end of row, neither empty nor occupied, was 157. Or, more accurately, wasn’t.

The entire pod was gone. In its place was cryo pod-sized alcove in the wall. The only remaining part of it was a red flashing console next to where it should have been. A single button on it was highlighted.

To test, Arizona picked the one next to it, pushed the same button, and stood back as steam spurted out from underneath the pod. Slowly, the pod started to descend into the floor. Then, very quickly, the pod flew downwards, and the sudden rush of air told Arizona that it had been jettisoned into vacuum. 157 had probably suffered a similar fate.

“Hey… Arizona?”

Something about her tone of voice- guilty, almost- made him immediately turn.

“I know what I said about not giving a shit about orders and stuff… _Don’t_ look at the fucking tube.”

“What?”

Her armoured boots thudded against the metal floor as she jumped down to his level. She walked over to him, hurriedly, and Arizona was made very aware that she was both seven inches taller, and bulkier.

“I said don’t look at the pod. Really. It’s for your own good.” Somehow, she made her voice both a tiny bit caring and incredibly threatening.

He gestured to the side, where the empty 157 pod bay was, without anything to look at.

“It’s pretty boring anyway.”

She looked to the side, read the number, made a few connections, and then couldn’t decide which was her favourite curse.

“Fuckunt! Shitting- “ she turned, put a hand to her helmet, and started talking into her radio.

It left Arizona able to turn back to the pod bay, flick through a few screens on the console, and find a little bit about what the fuck the target was. He found it _had_ been jettisoned, as soon as the _Staff of Charon_ had been engaged by the UNSC ships, and retrieved by a pelican.

It contained a human; strange, considering the Freelancers wanted it. Arizona had heard of VIPs being transported in cryo, though, so it wasn’t too weird. He tried to find out who- probably some politician or researcher- but there was too much fucking encryption.

_High level VIP- and they don’t want you to know about them… Has to be Hadúr personnel._

_What if it was one of our targets? We’ve probably left a_ lot _of enemies._

_True, but we didn’t leave many alive._

Kelly’s mouth cocked up in one corner.

_Also true._

_Thus, the pod-person is someone you know from Hadúr, probably personally, who Freelancer wants. If it was just to arrest or kill them, they wouldn't have to hide it from you; therefore, the target is Hadúr personnel that Freelancer’s leadership want working for them._

Frowning, and already thinking of justifications for murdering the target, Arizona started to delve through everything lacking high level encryption. The medical records were useful- they had to be accessed by the medical crew in charge of the cryo bay, so it had no encryption at all, and revealed a lot about whoever was in the pod.

Dead. That was the first thing that he read; the subject was deceased. That wasn’t too uncommon though; very recently killed soldiers, if they were important enough, were sometimes frozen so they didn’t decay, and then given medical attention and resuscitated at proper facilities.

This one was different though. The report said that they had been put into cryo a full day after death- by then, the brain would have already decomposed, making it impossible to revive them. Arizona digged a little deeper, into the fine points of the reports. Death by blood loss, body was already entering advanced stages of hypothermia, death caused by bullet wound to midsection…

Arizona stopped, although he wasn’t sure why. Something felt… Familiar. Something was tugging at the back of his mind, trying to break out into the conscious mind, like a word at the tip of his tongue-

He very quickly delved into the specifics. The cause of death was a single 14.5x144mm round, fired from a Sniper Rifle System 99 Anti-Matériel, at close range. The exact same way that the person standing right next to him, green eyes full of remorse, had been murdered.

He blinked.

It was a strange kind of feeling. He hesitated to call it an emotion because it was almost a non-emotion. An _absence_ of feeling. Not quite apathy, just an emptiness, except it seemed to overwhelm every other feeling in his body; even the dulled pain in his shoulder had vanished, replaced with a certain… Silence.

Something about his stance must have changed, because Texas stopped talking into her mic, and slowly approached him. “Arizona, listen to-”

He turned to her, and said, slowly, ”Agent Texas. The person in the cryogenic pod is my dead partner. Please confirm.”

She didn't respond, which was a good enough answer.

_Now how to play it. She’s too dangerous to confront, so we’ll have to be sneaky about it; put her out of her comfort zone-_

_Oh, I can do that._

“Texas, I-”

“Tex.” she quickly said.

He smiled. She was probably trying to create a sense of familiarity, to lessen the blow. Or just trying to be consoling. Didn’t matter. “Tex… Do you- or did you- have this… Bond. Not an attraction, not love, but _more_ , like you just _fit_ with someone else. Somehow, you both interact perfectly with each other, almost like one mind sharing two bodies.”

_Cute. But cute isn’t what made me ‘fit’ with you._

She nodded, hesitantly. “Yeah. I… Think I understand what you’re saying.”

He smiled, and at the same time, depolarised his faceplate. The clear visor showed her his manic eyes, tightly pressed lips, the tiniest tremble in his long, deep breaths.

 _Wait… No. Don’t. If you fucking threaten her, she_ will _retaliate._

“What would you do if someone tried to them them away from you?” His lips curled upwards into a vulpine grin, with too many teeth.

She cocked her head, slowly. “Is that a threat?” She sounded unsure, probably caught between trying to diffuse an obviously unstable ally, and keeping up her alpha bitch appearance.

_Diffuse. Apologise._

His eyes narrowed.

_Can’t do it. I’m physically incapable of it._

“Yes, Texas, that is a threat.”

They stared at each other awhile. Texas was probably struck by the audacity of a threat to _her_ , while Arizona was barely keeping a straight face.

_The audacity of it! The blatant affront!_

_You’ve gotten yourself killed. Hope her reaction was worth it._

Finally sighing, Texas said, “Yes. The target is- _was_ \- Kelly-217, from your old spec-ops program. Happy?”

Arizona voice dropped a couple octaves, when he said, “Is that a serious fucking question?”

“Assholes! Drop the fucking guns!”

_Why would they not just fucking shoot?_

Shaking his head in frustration, Arizona looked at four soldiers, stood behind Texas, each with guns levelled at them. Although they were only four, these ones were dressed in full powered armour, which led him to believe they might be similar to the dickhead ODSTs he’d met earlier. Elite. Probably some form of shock troopers.

“Neither of us is holding a weapon. Fucktard.”

“Get on the fucking ground!”

“You actually caught me at a bad time, and honestly, I’m feeling a little… _suicidal._ ”

“I _will_ shoot you, motherfucker!”

Arizona stared at him with contempt, while Tex discreetly formed her left hand, hidden from the shock troopers’ view, into a fist, then pointed left twice. He smiled back, as Tex made three fingers, and slowly counted them off.

He polarised his faceplate again, hiding it from view. The soldier he’d been staring at visibly gulped.

At zero, Arizona ducked and rolled, underneath the fire of four battle rifles, and pulled out his sidearm as he did. As he rolled back up, he fired two shots at the rightmost target then two more at the inner right: Texas span around, made up the distance in a flash, and smashed into the far left while shoving a knife into the last one’s throat.

Arizona was surprised when he found out that everyone was still up- except for the one Tex had stabbed. _That_ one was dead. The other three were fine though- the bullets had ricocheted off the armour of the right ones, and the left had rolled from the impact, coming back up on his feet.

Meanwhile, a door had opened somewhere, and Texas was busy shooting at it while it shot back. She screamed, “Get the fucking shock troop fucks!”

Arizona ran up to the re-aiming two, and in one swipe, swatted both guns out of their hands. While they recovered, he shot five bullets at the other soldier, doing no real damage to them, but two of the bullets pierced the rifle they were holding and destroyed it.

All three pulled out knives, and formed a tight circle around Arizona. He brought out his own arc dagger- much more advanced- and then showed a very vulnerable back to one of them.

As expected, they leapt at the opportunity- when they did, Arizona jumped and kicked backwards, hitting them right in  the face. He landed between the other two, brought up a blue light to block a steel blade, and quickly turned, ducking. He punched the shock trooper in the gut, span around _again_ , and roundhoused the first one.

By then, the one he’d deceived was back, lunging. Arizona sidestepped, span, and used the momentum to slam the dagger into their back. It went in all the way to the hilt, and the shock trooper fell down, screaming.

Then he was on the defensive. Two knives were constantly flashing at him, and he was parrying as fast as he could, as his own knife became nothing but a blue streak across his vision. Reflex kicked in; he wasn’t even aware of what was happening anymore- he just saw silver, and shoved his own hand into the way of it.

As he realised he was getting pushed backwards, Arizona jumped back, crouched, and pushed forwards. He leapt at them both, ducking under one blade while dodging another, and turned sideways. His legs connected with one, slamming into their head, while his arms wrapped around the other’s neck, dragging them onto the floor with him. As soon as they were on the ground, blue light came down on them, again and again, as Arizona ripped open their chest.

Then, slowly, Arizona stood up straight. He turned to the last one, and grinned as they scrambled to their feet.

The shock trooper brought up their combat knife, trembling, as Arizona paced forwards. As he did, his thumb pressed into a little groove on the hilt of the arc dagger, and the glow of the blade got a little bit brighter- he’d have only a few seconds before he risked melting the knife, but that was plenty of time.

Viciously, Arizona brought back the dagger, and slashed it at the shock trooper with the full force of MJOLNIR. When the dagger connected with the combat knife, his opponent’s blade snapped clean in half, dismembered edges gleaming white with heat. The dagger continued onwards, and passed through the trooper’s throat.

The final shock trooper stood very still for a few seconds, reached up to their neck with a tentative hand, and then gagged.

Arizona stood on one foot, hopped forward on it with his other leg high in the air, and  snapped his leg out at the shock trooper’s head. With half of the neck already sliced apart, the rest tore off from the torso, and the bulky helmet flew across the room.

The headless body stood for a few more seconds, before toppling to the ground. Arizona realised that the ambient sounds of gunfire had stopped, and looked over to where it should have been coming from. Six troopers stood still, gawking at him.

He stared back, and watched as a cyan blur landing in the middle of them, and a bright blue streak cut them to pieces. He looked to the side, saw Agent Texas cloak and disappear, and then looked back to see Agent Carolina level a pistol at his head.


End file.
